I love Christmas :)

Hey everybody!

Christmas here was WONDERFUL! I have eaten more tourtiere (meat pie) and bouche de Noel (these Christmas ice cream/cake logs) than I thought was possible. It was SO fun though. Sister Palmer is my new companion and we are having the best time together. We laugh everyday...I don't think there's been a single day where we haven't laughed for at least half of the day. On Tuesday we met at Berri and went out for poutine (as is the tradition among missionaries) and then came home, unpacked, and went to go teach a new investigator. She's actually been taught by missionaries before (she's the wife of a member) but has smoking problems and has never been able to quit, but has finally decided that right after Christmas (so this week) she's going to stop for good. We're excited to keep teaching her and bring that family closer together so that they can get the blessings of an eternal temple marriage. I'm excited for it :)

We also spent a lot of time with members and less actives this week. It was amazing to me how many people remembered to invite the missionaries over to their houses for Christmas (we got at least 7 invitations, but had to turn quite a few down), but forgot about the other single people in the ward who don't have families nearby. So Christmas Eve we spent visiting with these single less active sisters and trying to help make their Christmas a little better. We had made fudge the other day and put some of that on plates and delivered it to less active families and it was a lot of fun. Then Christmas Eve we went to this Christmas party with a family in our ward and all their relatives and the elders were all invited too and we had such a great time. WE ate all night (including a meat pie made out of moose....yes, I ate moose. crazy) and the traditional turkey dinner. We then went to midnight mass at this Catholic church with the elders and that was an interesting experience that I don't think I'm going to repeat...it took way too much concentration for how tired I was that night to try to follow along and stand up and sit down at all the right times. But it was a fun experience to do once. Then on Christmas day we went to a family in Lemoyne's ward (the elders area) and it turns out that my favorite family in our ward (the Groux's...the ones who she's 23 and a convert and they have 3 girls under the age of 3 and we go to their house like once a week) were there because it's the husband's family. They're from Switzerland and made a traditional Swiss meal which was good, but had some very different-tasting things (like these jello jigglers made out of like chicken bullion) and we were there for several hours and just laughed the whole time. At one point they gave us cookies which we had already eaten way too many other things and so I gave half of my cookie to Sister Palmer who gave her whole cookie to Elder Anderson, who gave it to Elder Helle, who stuck it back on the plate of the man who had given it to us to begin with. The man turned around and asked who had stuck it there and Sister palmer and I both blamed Elder Helle, but he pointed at us and the man thought it was us. It was just so funny though. Probably funnier in person....

Then we went to a second dinner at Sister de Seve's house. She's an older single woman and she had invited another older single woman to come and we were all sitting there and Sister Palmer and I were SO exhausted by that time that we could barely keep our eyes open. She gave us ANOTHER tourtiere (like the 6th one we had eaten that week) and so much more food that we could barely eat. It was SUCH a fun day...we really had a great time this week.

And I'm really looking forward to this transfer with Sister Palmer. She is so much fun...she's a lot like the people that I hang out with back home. And she's SO excited about the work...she goes and talks to everyone and she is so enthusiastic about it that it makes everyone else want to listen to her. I'm so excited. It should be a really good week :)

Anyways, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that you have a great New Year! I love you all!

Love, Sister Nicole Lindsey