It Only Takes a Small Miracle to Brighten the Day

Dear Family and Friends,

It has been so great to hear from so many of you through the many different means of communication. This is a very happy period of time where we focus on the savior, his ministry and especially his birth. We focus on the example the savior gave us and then we can look at our lives evaluate our effort and make plans to become better. I love this time (despite that cold). i am grateful for the pagans for making the mistake to put Jesus' birthday right before the new year so that we have the most perfect example before us before we make our goals to become better so that the goals we make are pointing us and are center on becoming more Christ-like.

Well the Past few weeks have been very unproductive. Getting into peoples house are hard and finding people home even harder. But despite the lack of work and teaching we ahve used the time to teacha  lot of active members in the stake and we have had a lot of spiritual lessons with them. In fact i think that did a lot of good for this stake. we got into a lot of homes and reminded them of the message of the restoration and the spirit was present. In the last week we have had 5 or 6 people call us and give us referrals or tell us they are going to invite someone to meet with us, or even call us to come over and teach there family. First time since i have been here that the members are really calling us and using our names and asking us to do things! i see a change for this next year for the stake as far as missionary work.

Not this alst sunday but the sunday before that i was privileged to give 2 talks and teach a lesson to the combined Sunday school. It was a lot of fun to be able to talk and teach even the older generation. But getting Participation is like pulling teeth! So i just call on people and i am very blunt about participation. The spirit will touch each of us and if we don't speak up we hinder the work of the spirit. it works the same way with a companionship. we must switch off, everyone i the class must participate. So we are not doing too much to teach non members but we are teaching. We are sharing our testimonies and we are encouraging others to do missionary work and i think we are still fulfilling our purpose even though i probably wont see any fruit at all from this. I love this stake and i love that people are trying to be soo helpful. people all the time are telling us that they are praying to have missionary experiences instead of praying just for us to have them. Life is great here. Some days are terrible but many more are pretty good. it only takes a small miracle to brighten the day and to let us know the lord is watching out for us.