New definition of the term "mini missionary"

Hey Family! It's going to be a short one. They shook up our preparation day AGAIN!! So time is short! The picture is of our bishop's daughters.  They showed up to the dinner table with all our stuff on! They could barely lift the bags :) It was too adorable not to take a picture.

We taught the S. family this week with our bishop and his son. It went really well, and Bishop is all excited about it. His 14-year-old son enjoyed it as well.

K. and R. are amazing. R. found a jar in a closet somewhere and has started her mission savings. She is so adorable! I'm so glad that she feels the Spirit. Kids are amazing! They were out of town on Sunday, but they will be back and we'll visit them on Christmas!

The Zanesville Elders handed over an investigator, P., who they've been teaching for four weeks and who lives in our area. They have him on date for this weekend. We're teaching him today, so we hope that goes well.

Top Moments from the week:
* Bro. B. singing Blue Christmas.
* Introducing the word "snow poop" to N.and H. I don't remember who I got that from but thank you, whoever you are. Zanesville loves it!
* Awesome light show in Cambridge. I love Manheim Steamroller and Transiberian Orchestra! :)
* Cards and packages from all of you! Thank you so much for all the love!

I've got to run! I'm out of time! Love you all! Merry Christmas!!! :)

Tracting in a winter wonderland

Hello everyone! It was an amazing week! Soooo super busy, but amazing!

F. is baptized and confirmed and so excited! The baptism was wonderful; when she came up out of the water she cheered for herself! Her husband came to take pictures. Awesome! We showed the first 10 minutes of "The Restoration". F. bore her testimony at the end of the meeting and her husband was crying! We gave him a chapel tour afterward and then F. fed us dinner, so we were able to talk more. Her husband isn’t a New Investigator yet, but I'm feeling good about this week! :) F. has a huge love for the gospel and for those around her. She will be performing with the ward choir this Sunday and is so excited. Everyone loves her and she is fitting right in.

Ma. is baptized and confirmed as well! Both she and F. were glowing after their confirmation in church on Sunday! I'm so happy that Ma. is baptized and ready to go. Everyone loves her as well!

K., R. and M .came to church yesterday. We had an amazing lesson with them on Saturday right before the baptism. We had two members there that turned out to have crazy similar experiences. It was awesome and the Spirit was so strong.

We taught T. last night and we have another appointment with her Friday. She's introducing us to her boyfriend and his son.

Other highlights:

Christmas Devotional Tuesday. I actually got to talk a lot with Shawn Bradley and I asked him where his daughters by their jeans. Alloy.com or something like that. He said, "Yeah! They have really cute stuff there! Especially jeans!" It was funny how excited he was to share it with me... might have had something to do with how excited I was to find out ;) For the talent show we ended up doing this little skit with chimes and we played “Away in a Manger” at the end. We were both wearing silly hats and I managed to throw in “feliz navidad” and got the mustache in! :) That just had to happen! :)

Our ride was unable to make it to the devotional, so we got a ride there with the Reynoldsburg sisters and basically expected a miracle for our ride home. The Westerville sisters were able to take us to Newark and a member happened to be there picking up her son from a swim meet; she took us the rest of the way. Thank you Heavenly Father!

Wallyball with Bishop's wife on Wednesday; we’ll do it again this week, and she's bringing a friend to introduce to us! :)

We were blessed to find six new investigators this week! Four of those are part of a family of seven (the other family members are too young to count as investigators:) They were a huge miracle and an amazing experience. I had been praying Thursday evening that we could find, teach and baptize all in the same day on Saturday. With the double baptism and other scheduled plans we had about 2 hours of finding time. It was around 6:30 and we'd headed over to a prospective elder’s home to meet/2-2-5 him. It didn't feel right, so we chose a different prospective elder. I accidentally drove past the trailer and had to turn around. I turned left and went to turn left again when I heard a child cry out. It was odd; it was oh so quiet, but also very clear to me. I asked S Richardson if she'd heard it; she hadn't. We turned around and drove up to the prospective E's home, but I felt that there was something to that sound I'd heard and I went to investigate. As we drove up and down the street I felt the impression that we needed to knock this street. So we did. No success, one return appointment for Monday, but most people were unhappy to see us so late at night. Well, we got to the end of the street and it was 8:45. We really needed to start driving home and we'd come to a good stopping point on the street. I felt like we needed to knock one more door. L & T allowed us to come in to share a 2-minute message with them. We got to know them a little bit and they felt the Spirit. They set up a return appointment for today. Oh, and they know our bishops family! I found it interesting how the Spirit guided us that day. Wow! It was a cool experience! Oh, and we found taught, and baptized on the same day! :)

The other two new investigators came from a member referral. We felt inspired to visit the S. family yesterday; Sister S. was excited to see us because she'd been talking about the Church with her brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and they wanted to meet us.  She took us over right away to meet them and we will be going back later this week!

The Lord does the hard work. We just need to listen!

Wow! What a week! I love you all! Have a very Merry Christmas!

I think I'll try defying gravity!

Hey everyone! It was such a great week here, and this week is going to be fantastic too!! :)

Ma. is getting baptized this weekend! We finished teaching her lesson 4 last week.  F. is getting baptized this weekend, too! She decided Friday night that she wants to be baptized December 15th. She's learned the lessons, been coming to church and is keeping commitments, so nothing stopping her! It was funny, because when we gave her a chapel tour she mentioned that the baptismal font was a huge waste of water and that we should baptize loads of people whenever we fill it. When she said she wanted to be baptized on the 15th I chuckled and told her that we would be complying with her request of baptizing multiple people when filling the font! She's so excited. We watched the Testaments with her. She loved it! The adversary was fighting hard to keep it from happening, but in the end, all his distractions ended up being a blessing in disguise. She's awesome and we're excited for her!

Mi. came to church as usual; we also had a lesson with him and a member this week.  We watched the First Presidency Christmas devotional with T.

J.  came to the Christmas party this Saturday. It's fun teaching her. She reminds me of Mom, as Mom joined the Church when she was 15. It's kind of fun! So much happens every day. I love it, and I love teaching.

Other highlights include the Shawn Bradley fireside. Elder Bham, Shawn told me to tell you that he was 6'8" in 8th grade! How crazy is that?!

We have our Christmas devotional this week in Dublin, and a training in Reynoldsburg as well. It's going to be a busy and great week!

I studied discipleship a lot during my personal studies this week. Elder Holland's talk from this past conference makes me want to be even better at finding and teaching his Sheep. He entrusts so much to us, and I know that I'm not using all of my talents/gifts to their full capacity. It takes discipline...thus the term disciple! :) I love the words of the prophets. They lead us to Christ.

Love you all! Keep me posted of your comings and goings! Thanks to all who've already sent Christmas cards! I love them and hang them on my wall! :)

It's December! How crazy is that?

Awesome week here! We had five investigators at church on Sunday!

Ma. is still on date, but for the 15th.  She finished the Book of Mormon and her testimony has changed from "I think it has to be true" to "I know it's true!" Awesome! She is wonderful!

We put J. on date for December 23rd.  She was so excited, then she went home and told her parents. They encouraged her to wait a while before she's baptized. She thinks around March, but I think January. We're going to get her family to the Christmas party this weekend and, once she's been to church and mutual a few more times, I think her parents will be more comfortable. She came to church again yesterday and went to mutual last week. She loves it and is getting more comfortable with the youth and with us.

We had a chapel tour with F. on Saturday and talked about all sorts of things. We were encouraging her to continue praying to Heavenly Father for answers and she told us that she already has her answer – she just needs to make the change. Cool! Thank you Heavenly Father! She is so prepared! She came to church yesterday, fasted, paid her fast offering, and joined the ward choir. She also signed up to feed us next week! :) I'm thinking late December or early January for her baptismal date.

K. is a member referral and awesome! She had a chapel tour on Saturday, and she and her two girls came to church yesterday.

We went to the temple on Thursday. It was wonderful! I haven't been since April, so I was quite rusty, but.... some missionaries don't get to go to the temple at all on the mission. I am so blessed. It was wonderful to enjoy the peace there.

We didn't have a car Saturday because of another "preventable accident" in the mission, but we had 4 member-present lessons, 2 chapel tours and a new investigator anyway that day!

Well, I'm out of time! Hope you all feel up-to-date – everyone have an amazing week! Stay safe!