Hermana Inman Letter December 9, 2013

Feliz Navidad!

I got to go caroling with the Spanish elders this week!  It was fun to sing hymns in Spanish again :)  I actually had an opportunity almost every day this week to use my Spanish in contacts on the street! Somebody even told me it was perfect haha.  I even got another Hispanic man that tried to set me up with his son.  Something about white girls who speak Spanish... creeper magnet material.  That's so awesome that the ward went out caroling and handing out Joy to the World DVD's!! The ward sounds like it is so missionary minded, and just on fire!  Way to go guys!  That sounds like a fun Christmas activity.  Our stake just had a huge Christmas musical production for the community and it was packed with visitors not of our faith. It was great!  Remember Claude?  He even came!! Lots of friends from people in the ward came, too, so hopefully something comes from that :)  they each got a copy of Joy to the World as well.  

It sounds like you guys are going to have a fun Christmas party this weekend!  Let me know how it goes! Is it cold down there? I can't even imagine going to -7 degree weather like Jake; I'm freezing over here in the 50's haha.  In my defense though, it's a wet cold from all the ocean humidity which means it's actually colder than a dry 50 degree temperature.

I got the package you sent with the Rivers, thank you so much!!! :) that was perfect!  The sheets are greatly appreciated, and I love the color!  We decorated our apartment with the fun decorations you sent, and the fuzzy socks are the best, and the treats were so tasty :) thanks a million! Thanks so much for helping me with my BYU applications.  We hear back in March, right?

Elder Richards from the 70 came this week to explain the actual pilot program we will be doing with Family History.  It's not something entirely new, but we will just be putting more emphasis on family history in our finding efforts so that people will feel the Spirit of Elijah and then they'll ask questions about why we do family history, which then gives us the opportunity to share the gospel with them.  We'll just be helping people get started by creating accounts on familysearch.org and getting them acquainted not only with the website, but with our consultants as well who will help them each week to do genealogy, while we come on separate days of the week to teach them the "why" of genealogy.  Nothing crazy, just a way to track the effect family history has in our finding efforts.  It works!  People are usually more willing to talk to you if they're talking about their families, I've seen it happen quite a bit!

I don't have any cool tracting stories this week, but I have a small experience that strengthened my testimony of prayer.  We were weekly planning on Friday and we could not figure out what a less-active lady in our ward needed to be taught- we felt like we had shared just about everything with her that we could.  So we decided to say a prayer and ask Heavenly Father what she needed this week.  After our prayer we just knelt there in silence and waited.  Then after a couple minutes "family history" came in my mind, and without telling sister MacKay, I turned to her and asked if she had thought of anything, to which she answered "family history."  It was just a cool little experience that showed me that this is truly the Lord's work and He guides it, especially when we pray with sincerity of heart.

Thanks for sharing with me the stories of Peter & John, and Stephen.  It's true, it really is a privilege to be in the service of the Lord, and even more so to be persecuted for His sake.  I wouldn't want to be doing anything else right now than serving the Lord, and I need to be more grateful for my trials.  They can only make me stronger, right?! 

I'm glad to hear that Jesse and Torie are so dedicated in church.  I'm proud of Jesse for honoring his priesthood and being worthy to prepare the sacrament each Sunday.  We all depend on worthy priesthood holders to be able to partake of the sacrament each week!  I'm proud of Torie for working so hard on her personal progress!  Keep it up :).  I'm also proud of Jake, I've always looked up to him. 

I'm healthy, the cold is going around and Sister MacKay has had a cold this past week, but so far I've been fortunate to not get a cold, just a few sniffles and coughs here and there.  I'm doing okay... I can't say this past week was much better, but I know things get harder before they get better, so I know it'll all be fine! Onward! I appreciate your prayers :).

I love you all and miss you!  Hope you're staying warm and drinking lots of hot chocolate! Have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Inman