Email December 23, 2014

Hey Ya'll! First of all Merry Christmas! I hope you're all having a wonderful holiday celebrating the reason for the season! So this week has been awesome and this next week is going to be even better! So we have a Christmas Eve party with all the missionaries and me and my district are going to sing in the talent show! I'm pretty excited an then for Christmas Day we're going to the Joy Families house to call our families. We also have like 4 dinner appointments for this week haha probably because of the whole Thanksgiving fiasco haha. Anyway so we taught Ally this week and he's progressing so well! The lesson last week went really well and we talked about how to recognize the spirit and he seemed to get it, we're actually going to meet with him today again so we'll see how far he read this time! The rate he's going he probably finished the whole book by now haha, I can' wait for him to get baptized! We also met with Bro. Choi, he's still doing really good too, he said he got an answer to his prayer and he recognized I was an answer from God. He still wants to get baptized but is waiting for his wife to come back because he wants to do it together. She's planning on coming back in January so we'll see what happens. He's so cute though, he's probably the most selfless guy ever, he's so humble and just so adorable! He started doing Family Home Evening with his kids all by himself, ahhh! I love it! We've also been contacting a lot by the stipe mall because since it's Christmas there's a lot of people out so that's been really effective. and I feel like people are a lot more willing to talk about the gospel because it's so close to Christmas because we'll ask people "hey we're sharing a message about Jesus Christ and how he's the first gift of Christmas, would you mind if we gave you our card about that?" Almost every time we've been able to talk to people and whether they're interested or not we usually have a really good conversation about the Savior, it's awesome! We also were able to talk to Bro. Estillos, he's this less active guy, who before, never let us meet with him. We would always go to his apartment and buzz his door and he would speak over the intercom and every time would be like "Not today girls, come back some other day." But he would say that EVERY TIME! so one day we were sitting in the car and we prayed and asked where we needed to be and both of us felt good about Bro. Estillos. We were like, for real Heavenly Father? He's not going to let us in. but we all know God knows best so we went anyway and buzzed his door and he actually came downstairs and met with us! He's this super cute 87, Mexican guy and he has a super strong testimony but he got offended at church and stopped coming. I swear that's what happens to like all the less actives. But we just kind of bore our testimonies and I said "You know, this is a perfect church ran by imperfect people. God's at the head for sure but God works through people he has called and unfortunately we're all imperfect and we all make mistakes but all of us are trying to get to the same point. As long as you know the doctrines are true, it doesn't matter what people say to you because your testimony will be strong enough that no one can shake it." It definitely made him think for a minute and he said he wants to come back eventually so hopefully we'll be able to help him with that. Then we had the most intense lesson ever with another less active Ernie, he's a super sweet guy and I love him a lot but oh my goodness. Ok so we went over to his house and sat by a fire in his front yard and we just asked him how we can help him come back to church and get to the temple. He has a lot of health problems and so we thought that's why he hasn't come in so long, and I think that's some of the problem too, but that's not what he said. he told us that he came to church one day in jeans and a nice shirt because of his health problems it's made him gain a lot of weight so he doesn't have any suits to wear, but someone pulled him aside and told him that it was disrespectful to wear jeans to church and he should come in nice clothes. Now Ernie is a sweet, sweet man and so he told us that he hasn't come back to church because he's waiting until he lose weight so he can fit in a suit again. Ahhhh! We told him it didn't matter what he wore to church, that God could care less what he wares, as long as he's there but Ernie was like "I know God doesn't care but I'm not the only one in that ward and if I'm going to be offensive to anyone, that's not what I want." We kept trying to tell him it didn't matter but he's so stubborn and so finally we just had to be blunt and we were like "You're letting something stupid stand in the way of your eternal happiness. You need to be partaking of the sacrament and God is asking you to come back to church and you know that's what you need to do, but you're letting a suit stop you." He still was determined not to come until he had a suit even though he knew God didn't care. He fears man more than God but the spirit literally didn't let us leave until we said everything we had to say. We all could feel the spirit so strongly it was crazy, we kept wanting to leave because it was getting later and later but seriously God was like "Not yet." We were there for like 3 hours not kidding. But sister Price and I were like shaking because of how strong the spirit was and we each bore our testimonies, including Ernie and it was awesome! He's still super stubborn and still wont come to church but we're working on it! I've learned the spirit changes hearts not me, I don't do anything, I'm just an instrument for God to use. When I align my will with God's THAT'S when I become a powerful missionary and servant of the Lord. The spirit is so real haha for sure and God is so aware, his timing is perfect and I just want to bare my testimony to you all that I kknow this church is true with all my heart! I love everyone of you and I know personally that God does too! MERRY CHRISTMAS! Remember the reason we celebrate this wonderful holiday! love you all! SIster Gordon