Happy New Year!

This week has just flown by! I can't believe that Christmas has come and gone already! Why does time fly by so fast?

It was so great to talk with the family. I feel bad because I wasn't sad to say goodbye. Not that I was happy but I realize that it will soon be time to say hello again. Christmas day was so nice. We were able to wake up open presents and then start our day with studies. It was so spiritual! We had a Christmas dinner scheduled but they ended up at the hospital. :( So....we went to Denny's! Just like in the Santa Claus. It was awesome! Then we went caroling with our district and had a wonderful time.

I have realized a true blessing in our area this week. Everytime we loose an investigator we gain one. This is what happened this week. One of our investigators is a 17 year old girl. She lives with her grandma and brother. Grandma has dimentia and doesn't really remember us until we are there. She also gets angry really easily. When we went to teach her onSaturday we took a permission form for Grandma to sign. It didn't go well and our investigator told us that in February she will turn 18. The plan is for us to come back then. Oh yeah, Grandma is also a J.W. So it all works out. We decided to just chat with her and still maintain a friendship. We started talking about some movies that she has seen recently. Somehow we landed on twilight and she said, " That's not a vampire! Thats a stripper- thats why he glitters! He is an eternal stripper!" We couldn't believe what had come out of her mouth. All we could do was laugh and move on. Then later we started laughing about it again and thought, oh goodness! We are so glad we don't have to worry about the media anymore! I can't wait to start teaching her again. ;)

As I said we have gained a new investigator this week. He is a referral (I'll call him Otto) and we had some trouble getting ahold of him and making appointments but it all worked out! Yesterday in our lesson he was telling us that a friend who is a member has talked alot about the chruch. So much to the point that Otto has dreamed about the chruch buildings being described by his friend. We are trying to figure out if it was the temple being described. During the lesson we asked Otto to pray about the Book of Mormon and if what we taught him was true. We kneeled down and he offered a beautiful prayer in Spanish. He is from Mexico but doesn't want to go the spanish missionaries. I asked him how he felt while praying and he said, "Peaceful. I feel like something good in my life is coming." Needless to say we were excited. I look forward to the experiences we will have with him.

I also had the wonderful opportunity to play the violin yesterday. I was quite surprised that I could even produce sound from the instrument it has been so long! Of course it comes with a price if a member hears.....hahaha I will be doing a muscial number here in the near future. I am super excited!

I think more than anything we have just been tracking down our investigators this week. They have gone missing for the last couple of days. We found them dont worry. ;)

Yesterday was 5th Sunday and so all 6 missionaries in our ward taught the combined lesson. Any guesses as to what we talked about..........? Missionary Work! We established expectations of what missionaries should be doing and what the members should be doing. It was all very positive and I think we helped the ward start thinking in terms of working in unity. I am excited for the new year to see where we go with the ward. We have a theme in our ward we are working towards it, Become Zion. Moses 7:18 talks about this and is very applicable. We have been told the members really liked it. However Im still not quite sure how the sisters can speak louder than the elders who had to get a microphone to be heard.....awkward.

 

I think 2013 in review would be this:

Miracles everyday!

Baptisms= Sugar, and others

Atonement

Temple

probably just missionary work in general

learning how to love

technology that allows me to communicate with family

 

Anyway not much else about our week. We are still working hard as always! I am excited for 2014! Have a great week!

Hurrah for Israel!

Love,

Sister Cottrell