Day by Day...

Merry "early" Christmas! 

This week was amazing! 

Fun! 

And nice! 

So we ended Pday last week with a bang! We are dinner 

with our Ward mission leader and their family is awesome! After we ate dinner there we meet up with most of the Ward missionaries and corralled to some of the members of the church. We sang " we wish you a merry KISSmas and a happy ROOTBEER. Then we handed them a big bag of Hersey kisses and a big pop bottle of root beer! It was fun to get to know the Ward missionaries and see the happiness on the members faces.

On Wednesday we made invitations to the Ward Christmas party for our investigators and such. They turned out cute. 

We then went to go find more people and 

let me tell you

 the way to get to some of these house is  kinda scary  -- diving up the cliff 

but then you look out the window and 

you see hills and green and 

beautiful natural landscape.  

It has been foggy the last couple of days

and it looks like Scotland!

Anyway we happened to knock on Melanie's door and she invites us in and about 10 minutes into the discussion she starts crying and letting all her problems go. All she wants is peace  in her life and she doesn't know how to find it. Seeing her in such confusion made me feel two things: of course sadness for her but relief to me in my life that I know where I am going, knowing that I can repent through my Saviors sacrifice has brought me tons of peace. We shared a few scriptures and she felt comforted and accepted to meet with us again in a few day! I was so excited! 

Later we met with the zone leaders to see what we can do to help each missionary in the zone. Then we had a transfer dinner helped by the stake. This stake is so gung ho about missionary work. I love knowing that the more missionary minded members there are the more work progresses! They even have a intense, spiritual bible class going to happen so our former investigators that we can release can still learn, less actives and so on.... it is amazing. I wish I could go. We got to have a little class and I learned so much! It was simple teachings and the Spirit was so strong! 

We met with Melanie again and this time she brought her boyfriend. 

All was going well a member even came with us and bore her testimony and then Melanie said "oh! Matt, is of different faith and he said ... instead of what you said" 

They were a little mean about it and kept asking questions about differences and trying to make us get fumbled in our words and such.

 So Sister Davis and I bore our testimonies invited them to read the Book of Mormon 

and to follow Moroni's promise at the end. And a chapter in the Bible. 

We have a lesson on Wednesday. So pray for that one. 

We had a few lessons with members asking for referrals and 

helping them in the Light the World initiative! 

I love all these daily things that we have to do. 

We shared about how our gift that we can give to our Savior 

is helping the light of the world grow ... 

that sometimes we can be like the wise men and 

bear gifts to others 

but sometimes we can also be like the shepherds giving only their praises to him. 

That struck me because when I feel that I am doing not enough 

I think again and remember that is also the small things that count. 

Like saying hi or thank you, smiling, doing the dishes for those we love, 

actually sharing the gospel -- give away Books of Mormon, etc.. 

I love how is Christmas all he have been ask to give us to act like our Savior! 

On Friday was district meeting and it was really cool!We went over more on the simplified planning guidelines and a lot of role plays  ---- which are bomb! 

The building we have them in is in old Placerville and it is so cute! 

It is getting pretty cold up here.

Anyway, that night was the best 

because Chris got baptized. 

Everything ran really smoothly. 

I am really excited to teach him 

the new member lessons. 

He is awesome! 

He even bore his testimony at his baptism 

and it was really nice. 

Saturday night he got in a car accident in Southern California and couldn't make it to his confirmation at church in Sunday!  It was sad because he texted us while we were at the Ward Christmas party with his nonmember family. We even had to tell them.   The rest of the night we were trying to see who could go down and help help out with the kids and with Chris... good thing President and Sister Jardine was there ( there was another baptism happening! ) because Bishop said that Chris couldn't get confirmed on Christmas Sunday so probably Jan. 1. 

Not ok! So we are crossing our fingers that Chris is ok and everything works out! 

We also did service serving elders people a Christmas meal for four hours!

It was so nice to see them happy and full tummies!  Some families came too! 

I served the gravy and then I served the stuffing, green beans, sweet potatoes. 

We went through a lot of food! At the beginning we smelled something funny and gross. We kept serving the food but something was wrong 

so we told one of the in charge ladies she looked at the turkey meet and her eyes go big. 

The meat was spoiled and we already fed at least a their of it to the people. 

So we just hoped and prayed that no one got sick. 

Some of the leaders ate it before we found out 

so since that day we have been asking them if they felt sick at all. 

They keep saying yes so cross your fingers! 

Then this morning we helped the zone leaders wrap 70 Books of Mormon! It took us two hours. Hey had e missionaries write their testimonies about the Book of Mormon and glue it on the back of the front cover. It turned out so nice so now 7 sets of missionaries have ten Books of Mormon to hand out this week! 

We have temple Conference tomorrow and I am so excited!