It's Snowing!

Hey! We woke up to snow and now are enjoying it! It's so pretty. I forgot how much I liked snow. Luckily it's not too cold out or I probably wouldn't like it as much. Haha. Wow, Christmas is coming up so fast. It feels like the beginning of December, but it's not! We have seen some interesting decor around here. One thing that people do here is get on their 2nd floor and fasten the string of lights to the top and then drop them off and call it good. And they use a lot of the rope lights. So we see houses with a bunch of lights coming straight down from one spot and then just pile at the bottom. There is no order to it at all. We have enjoyed that. Haha

We have had such a great transfer so far and it's only been one and a half weeks. We have seen lots of miracles so far. When Sis. Adaniya was here we kept going back to this one street called Garland Ave. Well when Sis. Stoehr got here she was looking at the map and pointed out that she liked Garland Ave. At the time we had 2 investigators on Garland Ave. and have been tracting around each time we went there. So her first full day here we went to follow up with a former investigator on Garland Ave. and did some more tracting and the second door we knock we meet Vernitta Manuel. As we were telling her who we were she looks at us and asks "so are you gonna come in?" So we did and we taught her the Restoration and then she came to Stake Conference that Sunday. Then we saw her pretty much everyday this week. And she came to church yesterday and just loved it! She is going to be baptized this Saturday the 18th at 4pm. She just loves everything we teach her. At Stake Conference Sis. Derricott bore her testimony and talked about quitting smoking and coffee and when we taught Vernitta the lesson after Stake Conference she brought it up how she used to smoke 1.5 packs a day and she was down to a half pack. She is still working on quitting...only a couple more left...so if she is able to stop by her goal of Thursday then she will get baptized on Saturday. She is so prepared it's not even funny. She is like David Payne in Norfolk...just unbelievably ready for the fullness of the gospel. The Ward Mission Leader picked her and Janice, one of the ladies the elders are teaching for church. On the way home Janice was talking about how she is just wanting more knowledge and not getting it. So Vernitta shared her testimony about how it's going to be fine and this is the right thing, etc. It was sweet to hear about that! And another cool thing is that Vernitta's brother in California has met with missionaries before and if I understood her correctly he has asked them to come back. He is being so supportive to her and just helping her to be excited. How refreshing that she isn't getting anti from him!!!!

We are also teaching a friend of Sis. Ibrahim's named Inez. Inez is so cool and she is also soooo prepared for the gospel. Referrals and prepared people are coming out of the cracks and it is sweet! Last transfer was so hard to find real solid investigators, but this transfer is so amazing. We love it so much because we are teaching people who want it and are keeping their committments. We still have those that don't, but it's nice that we have a handful of progressing investigators.

Most everyone here in the Branch will leave for Christmas break, so as a Branch we are done with Christmas parties except for the program next Sunday.  The different families will probably have some things going on that hopefully we can join in on.  As a zone we are going to have a Christmas Eve ugly sweater white elephant party.  It'll be fun.  Sis. Adaniya and I found a trumpet in our trash area once, so we cleaned it up and Sis. Stoehr and I will take that for our white elephant gift.  We thought that would be funny.  And the Ibrahim's signed up to have us for Christmas Eve, so instead of Mexican food I will probably have African food!  Haha, so fun.  I love this family.