La Felicidad del Santa Rosa: Year 1 - Letter 16

The power of the Book of Mormon, Christmas Parties, and la Casa de Ants

Hola! Que pasa?

Well my favorite part of writing is coming up with the titles. This one was so fun to come up with and I will expound on all of the above in just a second but I want you to wonder about it all a little more first. First of all, thanks again to all of you who participated in my advent calendar. It is the best and it gives me something to look forward to every day and then something to think about and ponder on through out the day. I have loved reading all of your favorite scriptures, quotes, and Christmas stories.

This week has been jam packed with so many great meetings and experiences. We had a wonderful district meeting on the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is so awesome and such a powerful tool in conversion. President Alba has realized that a lot of times we just hand out Book of Mormons almost for the fun of it but people do not realize the importance or potential that this wonderful book has. So he has encouraged us to teach that the Book of Mormon is another testament of Christ and a companion to the bible using the Introduction but then to show them the First Book of Nephi and to read the summary explaining it more as we read it with them. Then the next step is to read the summary and first 12 verses of chapter 1 of first Nephi. As we read it with them we apply it to their lives and make sure they are understanding the story. Verse 12 leads the story at a cliff hanger and so then we invite them and ask them if they will finish the first chapter. I hope this makes sense because it is so powerful and as we have used we have seen people get so excited to read the Book of Mormon. Instead of walking away thinking oh I hope the read it we walk away knowing that they will read it because we saw that excitment in their eyes and we saw that they did not want to stop reading. It is really fun to teach it this way and it works!

Christmas in the mission is incredible. It is so fun to share the greatest gift ever every day and to just feel Heavenly Fathers love for His children that live in Fairfield. This week we had our branch Christmas party and boy do Spanish Branches know how to throw a party. It was so fun! We had catered Hawiian pork, chicken and beef, salads, and delicious pies. There was a pinata and tons of Latin dancing. It was just so much fun to be with everyone and to just feel the love that the members showed for one another. Angie our investigator came with Alba (her boyfriends mom) who is less active. We also had so many of our less active memebrs there and it was so just so fun to be with all of these wonderful people that I love.

So now the funniest thing of the week. So since I have been on my mission I have developed a love for cereal and milk (I know finally I have come around to liking it) and one morning this week I went to get a nice bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats and to my suprise the box was covered in ants so I killed the ants on the box and went and opened the box and saw ants crawling through my beloved Honey Bunches of Oats. I stopped myself from scraming and just went ahead and took the box out to the trash can outside. I had yogurt for breakfast instead and then told Hermana Merkley about the incident. We looked throught the rest of the cupboards and we didn't see anymore ants. So to make this story short there is trail of ants from one corner of the kitchen cieling to the other corner. We spent two hours later in the day killing ants and cleaning out the Carlson cupboards and now we are paranoid that ants could be crawling on us or on our food. So we are off to buy air tight containers to protect my Honey Bunches of Oats.

Well the work is a little slow but we still have exciting and wonderful times and I am learning so much.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas. I know that this Church is true and that Jesus Christ is our Savior. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.

Love you so much more than my ant covered cereal,

Hermana Hillary