Dear Family and Friends,
What. A. Week! Can I just start out by saying 3 BAPTISMS!!!!!!! But we'll get to that later in the email.
So Christmas Eve was wonderful! We taught Brandi and Julie in the morning and then we went and made fudge for some of our investigators/members who help us with everything. The Lewis's invited us over to do that with them and it turned into a big group sing a long which was so great! I haven't played the piano like that in ages. It was sight reading to the max, and having people singing along and playing the guitar and the flute! I messed up a few times but we had such a fun time!! The fudge was delicious too! Someone we gave it to said that it tasted as though it were made by "celestial hands" hahaha. Apparently that's a gift of being a missionary, your food is blessed beyond measure and tastes celestial. I'll take it! Then we went to a District Activity where we went and sang to an old people's home. We were taken to the memory loss unit and this old man kept shouting out while we were singing "WHERE'S MY MEAL???" and "ARE YOU DONE YET?" hahahahahah. It kinda didn't fit in with the song "Do you hear what I hear?" cos apparently he didn't and he just wanted a meal. We were told to just tell him it's coming haha! So we did and he was quiet. He was so funny! We sung that, and "O Holy Night" and "O Come O Come Emmanuel". It was such a great experience! Then we went back to a members home and played Apples to Apples and it seriously was like we were all just a group of teenagers again. We laughed til we cried! Then on the way home President Lewis got pulled over by the Police and it was already gone 9:30pm and he said to the Officer that he had to take the missionaries home haha!
Then Christmas Day was good too! We started out by delivering all our fudge, then went to the Lewis's, then the Sears where I Skyped you, then the Koevens! Then we had a Zone Activity at the Dixie Institute Building and we watched Despicable Me 2! It was SO NICE to just switch off and forget all the stresses of missionary work for an hour and a half and just laugh at Gru being stupid. Alllllllllll week long I've said to Sister Donaldson in a zombie voice "She kisses my bobos. She braids my hair. We love you mums. Everywhere." hahaha. We had to write down 5 things we love about our companions and as a joke I told Sister Donaldson that I was going to write "She kisses my bobos. She braids my hair. We love you companions. Everywhere." haha but I was more mature about it than that ;) It was good to get to know more Elders and Sisters. I think thats the thing I miss most about old life, not the clothes or the sleep or the relaxation or the FB or the boys - I just miss hanging out with people my own age. We're all tucked away in our areas and are around families all day long that we never get to just hang out (Which of course is right and I don't dispute that!) and I didn't realise how much I missed it till we played Apples to Apples and watched Despicable Me! But it was SO GOOD to get back to work on Thursday. It felt so weird Tuesday and Wednesday and I'm sure New Years Eve will be just as weird! Over all Christmas was wonderful, and the best part was Skyping you! I wish we could've talked for longer!
So the inevitable sad news of every week: our golden investigator from last week cancelled on us. Well, she didn't. Her husband definitely did. We had a feeling he wouldn't want her to learn about the Gospel, so we prayed all week that his heart would be softened, then that phone call that no missionary wants to hear came saying that he'd like to cancel the appointment she made with us. We spoke to the neighbours who are in their Ward and enlisted their help so they took them some bread and introduced themselves and we will see them this coming week to try to set up an appointment now that some members have shown them that Mormons aren't weird and crazy. Well, just crazy. We're pretty weird ;) in a good way. Oh and we saw this man on his drive as we were walking so we talked to him and he turned out to be a Baptist man that did NOT like Mormons. He told us that we're gonna get to Heaven and Jesus is going to tell us that He never knew us and to depart from Him. It was so sad. He bashed the heck out of us. I wanted to show him scriptures etc but I HATE confrontation and just wanted to run away. But instead I mustered up my courage and bore testimony to him and he told us to beware cos Satan makes us feel good about things and basically I said to him something along the lines of "Listen, we're two 19 year old girls who have left home and families for 18 months to bring hope to people. We're not here for an argument. We have an appointment to be at now, it was nice to meet you!" and we left.
But after that we went to our appointment that a member had set up for us. It was at his house with his sister's boyfriend who wasn't a member. We taught him and he started crying and said how he was feeling the same thing he felt at this other LDS person's house! IT WAS AMAZING. It went SO WELL!!!! In fact it went so well that he knelt down and prayed at the end of it! And we saw him again that evening in the Visitors' Centre! I am waiting for the blessed day when I don't cry watching 'God's Plan For His Family'! Haha. He loved it and he watched the 'Joseph Smith - Prophet of the Restoration' movie and loved it. He says he loves how the LDS church has the Priesthood and fathers can bless their children and loves how family oriented it is. He believes Joseph Smith's story and that his family is the same as Joseph Smith's family, all going to different Christian denominations and he doesn't know which one is right! So he came to Church yesterday too! We are hopeful for him! His name is D. B stood us up again so we're thinking of leaving him to the Jehovah's witnesses because that is what he wants. We're really just here to separate the wheat from the chaff and not to convince people of anything. J was like "I don't see why ANYONE would be rude to you two! I wish you would move in with me! How can people not see that glow around you?" awwww!
Her baptism was the best! It went so well! A lot of the ward came to support, they are such a great ward! Some wards do better than others at missionary work and theirs is a wonderful ward. Both J and L cried when they came up out of the water and they were SO happy! They wanted the closing hymn to be "Go Tell It On The Mountain!" hahah so we all sung gospel style ;) it was a great evening.
B's baptism went well too! Her husband H (less active) didn't seem too thrilled. A few people commented that to us afterwards as well. He just sat slumped with his face in his hands the whole time. We don't know what's up with that. We will try to help him though! It was a great weekend to see three of Heavenly Father's daughters come back to Him.
This week we felt the Spirit testifying through us the things that people need to hear. We ate dinner at someone's home and as usual we shared a thought at the end and I just opened my scriptures and read a verse from 2 Nephi 31 about how we feel the Spirit in our own language and it turned out that the husband has MANY questions about that and he feels that he can't say the church is true because he has never felt the Spirit. It was cool how I just opened it out and that's what he needed. I didn't even do anything special! So we discussed it with him and figured out he needs to read the Book of Mormon for once! We had a cool experience at the Jacobsen's home! It turns out that their grandson is Terral Tyler!!!! WHATTTTT!!! So cool!
Due to all our investigators getting baptized we now need more people to teach! So we got a lot of referrals from people so it's an exciting time! I've been studying "experience" in the scriptures and it's cool to see how we are here just for experience. We didn't come to earth for fun or for hard times, but just for experience. How the Lord says to Joseph Smith "all these things shall give thee experience and shall be for thy good". We can read of the experiences that Job had and Moses had. We are here on earth for the training ground to become Gods. We need to learn how to react when a child goes wayward, or when our house burns down, or when everything is going great, because we're here learning to do as God does. We are training. And we need all these experiences. God doesn't give us hard trials - we came here knowing we'd experience them but yearned to be as He is so readily accepted! He is teaching us how to be as He is. I loved that!
Well folks I think that is all for now!!
I love you all and need your prayers and letters and love!
Sister Nicholls
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