The Perfect Week: Wearing a Boot...but not the fashionable kind

Hola familia! Skype details. We finally figured it out. It'll be 11am my time on Christmas day so 12pm your time :) We'll have about 45 minutes. I'm excited to see you all! So this past week was for sure the best week that I've had on my mission so far. It was super busy too but those are the best weeks. So Tuesday: we found out that we were moving apartments :( not fun. so we spent a lot of the day doing that. Wednesday: so every morning we go and play basketball for our morning exercise so that's really fun. This Wednesday our mission president and his wife and two other elders wanted to come play with us and the other two sisters that we lived with too. So we all met at the chapel and started playing. So..OK don't freak out but this is what happened. Sister Harris passed me the ball. I turned around and jumped up to take the shot. I landed on the side of my foot and may or may not have broken my foot :) Don't worry we went to the doctor and they took X-rays and I have a small fracture on the side of my foot. I was on crutches for the first day but now I have a boot and I am walking fine. Also I'm resting when I can..orders from sister winn. I'm icing it and elevating it and it's healing fine. I have an appointment on Friday so they can check up on it. Sister Winn/Harris/everyone is taking really good care of me too so no worries at all. I'll be walking normal again in 4 weeks. You'll see at Christmas when we Skype that it looks super funny haha. Also I got sooo much food from this accident. So many people came over and brought us stuff so we didn't even have to go shopping this week :) So that was Wednesday.

Rinna in her cast! Thursday we just prepped for our baptism on Saturday. Friday we got a new car!! Brand new :) Mostly the zone leaders and district leaders got the new cars but I think they gave us one too because they felt bad that they made us move :) Ok Saturday was sooo great! Remember the Medez Family that i was telling you about? Well at 12 they got married and the branch did such a good job of setting up everything for the ceremony and the party right after. Lisseth and Luis asked Sister Harris and me to be their witnesses so that was nice. So we did that and then we went over the the building for the baptism right after that. This was the most perfect baptismal service. First off everyone was there on time, never happens. President and sister winn came to our baptism too so we were really excited about that. The program was sooo good. You could definitely feel the spirit at this service. We had one of the youth give the talk on baptism and she did an amazing job. She is 16 and a convert and is getting ready to go on a mission. Then the Elders Quorum Pres gave the talk on the holy ghost and it was super good. Then the baptisms :)) The mom went first, then the dad, then jose luis (11) and then jaffet (17-it was his birthday today) went last. It was perfect. Then Sister Harris and I taught the Doctrine of Christ while they were changing.Then testimonies. My favorite part was the welcomes. For the welcome to the primary we asked the president and Kevin Jara (hes 8 and just got baptized) to give the welcome. The primary president said some stuff but then asked Kevin to share his testimony. Kevin started crying and said that he felt the spirit so strongly when he was baptized. How cute! Then at the end the mom and dad bore their testimonies. For the closing song we had the ym and yw sing. The next day, they all got confirmed :) IT was the perfect week. Love you all and miss you. Hope you have a great week! Sister Adorable

The Medez Family at their wedding and on their baptism day!

2000 Baptisms, Christmas, and Hitting the 6 Month Mark

Hola Familia!! Mom and dad thanks for the great letters this week! This week i got the package from the youth in the ward and a package from the Bluhm family, can i have their address so i can send them a thank you card? THanks for the care package from the ward, the letters were super funny. Tash, how does someone i dont even know write more to me than you did? haha. Annie's letter was really cute, thats exciting that they are back in the ward. Alright to respond to your letter: Favorite scripture is a hard one, maybe 3 nephi 13:5 or Alma 37:37. there are too many good ones and favorites but one of those will work. And yes you can send my letters to whoever wants them :) As for the biking pic, i like that one too. only problem is its on my last companion's camera so i dont have it :(( if you write her a letter and ask for it im sure she could get it to you next week Sister Jenny Bragg 3195 s 300 e #1 SLC UT 84115. Sorry about that. Ok for christmas, im still not really sure whats going to happen/ when were talking to you yet BUT i do know that we found someones house to skype. So ill get to see you but i still dont know how the mission is doing calls on christmas. Ill let you know as soon as i know. Thanks for the shoes, ill for sure use those and throw the others ones away haha. Mom, thats so great that you bore your testimony! Glad that tasha's talk went well. This past week was really great. We are continuing to see miracles everyday. We are looking at having 8 baptisms this month and 7 more in January so things are definitely going well in the area. We have a family of 4 (the Mendez Family) getting baptized on saturday. So the parents are getting married at 11am and then the baptism will be at 5. Its also their oldest sons 17th birthday so thats going to be such a special day for them. We just helped another one of our investigators go and get their marriage license and they want to get married in 2 weeks. That was a miracle because Salvador was completely against it. We are so happy though because then Naomi can finally get baptized! She has been coming to church/ trying to pay her tithing for about 2 years straight. Her son is 8 and so ready to be baptized but wants to do it with his mom. So theyll probably get baptized on dec 29. Oh i forgot, Luis Mendez and his son Jean Pierre (hes 5) they both had their hair super long! Well we stopped by on saturday for a lesson and they both cut it! They look so good. He said, " i told you sisters, there are going to be some changes in my life. first my hair and on saturday baptism" SOOOO amazing!! We are getting close to hitting about 2000 baptisms for this year in this mission. Keep praying for us that we will be able to keep finding those people who are ready to hear and accept the gospel so that we can ultimately reach our goal of 3500 next year :) Sooo today Sister Harris and I printed out our christmas cards so well start sending those out today. If you have anyone that you think i should send them to, please send me their addresses :) I printed like 5 extra just in case you thought of anyone i missed. For our family christmas card, you can just say that i say merry christmas and write whatever else. Im sending you a christmas card today so maybe ill write a little note for the family card on there. Mom, if you could send some stamps for the cards that would be great :) A year from tomorrow i come home, crazy! Well i think that that is everything for now. Have an amazing week!! Love you! Sister Adorable

Caroling

Two Angels, Ten Investigators, and One New Address

So this past week has been amazing!! Probably the best half of a week of my mission so far. So first thing, I got transferred into a new area. It was hard to leave all of the people that we were teaching but it was good. I didn't go very far though. I'm serving in the bordering area of my last area in the Salt Lake Zone. I'm serving in a branch (Forest Dale Branch). So on transfer day i thought that i was going to Layton for sure. So at transfers I went and stood in front of the Layton zone sign but i didn't find my name. Well remember how i lived with Sister Harris my first transfer in the field? We weren't companions but we lived together because we lived outside of the area. Well we became super good friends and have wanted to serve together ever since but i was almost positive that that was never going to happen because we were too good of friends. Well guess what, i'm serving with sister Harris!! We were both so stoked and we know that it's going to be a great transfer. We are really excited that we are serving together because we are friends but we also know that Heavenly Father has big things in store for this area and expects a lot out of us in serving together to better the area. But i was soo excited! Anyway so a little bit about the branch that we are serving in. It's really small BUT member support is amazing!! Everyone in that ward truly understands their role and responsibility in contributing to the work. They are such amazing fellowshippers too! We have seen so many miracles this week but I'll just share two: The Mendez Family- This family is really special. They moved here from Vegas because someone had promised them a house and a job and a ton of good stuff here in salt lake but they were tricked into coming here and didn't get any of that. The dad is Luis , the mom is Lizeth and they have 4 kids (jaffet, jose luis, jean pierre, and a little girl but i cant remember her name). Luis has such strong faith in Jesus Christ. He is an amazing example. He isn't working right now but is looking for a job where he doesn't have to work on Sundays so it's taking a little more effort to find on. Lizeth is working at rancho market and works everyday but tuesday and works during church so she hasn't been able to make it to a sacrament meeting. (oh we also have sacrament meeting last). Well this past week, we had a lesson with jaffet (16) in the young men presidents house, jorge (he's like 22 so he's really close to the youth). It was such a good lesson and he asked really good questions so we invited him to be baptized on dec 16 and he said yeah. Then we invited his dad and younger brother to be baptized the same day and they both said yes because they want the entire family to be baptized on the same day. Lizeth cant yet because of her job but well keep working with her too. So we saw them at church yesterday and jaffet even came in a shirt and tie. After church we were going to go over to visit them to confirm that we can go to temple square with them on tuesday. well we thought that lizeth was going to be at work so we were just going to drop by really quickly since we couldn't go in. Well right as we get there Lizeth drives in, she had a break from work. So we go in and chat with Luis and Lizeth. Then Luis told us how he had been offended by someone at church. SO we went on and on and we thought that we were losing them for sure BUT after he got everything out that he needed to he said "Dont worry, I made a promise with God that i was going to come closer to him on dec 16 and i am going to keep that promise. I go to church to come closer to God so I'm going to keep doing that and my family too". Then he started to cry, he was bawling and then he looked at us and said," I don't see you two as women..I see you as the two angels that God has sent into my life. When i talk to you, I talk to God". It was a really special and humbling experience. I love this family and I'm so excited for the progress that they are making and that even though they are going through a rough time that they know to put our Heavenly Father first. Monica-So Monica is a single mom. Her kids are all members but she has not taken that step yet. She has been investigating for a really long time. It's really hard to get ahold of her too. SO last night Jorge and Kenia (the YM and YW presdient who are married, so cute) they went over to monica's house to hang out with her kids and wait for monica to get home. We went over after our lesson so around 8. We had an amazing lesson with her and then invited her to pray with us about baptism. She said she was afraid to so we read 2 nephi 32: 8. THen her extended family rang the doorbell. We were so bummed but then they came in and went downstairs. So we kept going. After she read that scripture she said "wow, find me another one". So we shared Dyc 121 with her verses 1-3 and then 7-9. She started crying so hard she could barely talk. THen she said she knew that she needed to be baptized. So she prayed. We invited her for the 23 and she said " no, can it be sooner?" so right now we are working for this weekend! it was such a cool experience. Another amazing thing that happened this week is that we got 10 investigators to church!! That was amazing! Thats pretty much my week, I hope that you are all doing well. I love you!