#2

Hope everyone had a merry Christmas! It was so wonderful to Skype with my family, you guys all look so good! On Christmas day our district went caroling at a nursing home and we ding-dong-ditched some presents to people. We went to a member's house that evening and played board games and ate super good food. Success. The day before Christmas was exchanges- we switched companions for a day and one of the Sister Training Leaders came to my area to see if I knew what I was doing. Since I'd only been there 2 weeks I really had no idea where anything was, and we have no GPS, so I thought I'd be sneaky and ask the Elders to go joint-teaching with us so I could just follow them wherever we were going. It worked for a little bit, but eventually they had other appointments to get to and I couldn't slide by anymore. After some map reading we figured it out and the lessons went great, but I definitely need to work on memorizing the area more- it's huge! The next morning before she left, our mission president was dropping off mine and Sister Teuscher's Christmas presents, and I may have accidentally locked us out of the building...so up walks President Forbes while I look like a street youth hoodlum picking a lock with my bobby pin...luckily he's a cool guy and thought it was really funny (I did not). We got back inside after a while and now I think it's hilarious. Whatever, I'm a greenie, the STLs don't care haha. 

Yesterday was a really memorable day. Pray for miracles, because they happen! We'd been trying to visit this less active older lady for several days, but couldn't find her. It turns out she was in the hospital in a coma, so we went to go visit her. Her nurse was a very nice man named Jeffrey and started talking to us about missionary work. It turns out his brother is Mormon so he knew we were missionaries from his church. We got to talking about his journey coming to Christ. He said he'd been struggling with feeling run down physically and spiritually. *Backstory: I'd been carrying around a Book of Mormon in my bag all week and hadn't used it, so that morning I was going to take it out. But the spirit prompted me to keep it in, even though it's hecka heavy.* I told him there was something in my life that had really helped me with those same feelings he was having, and I had my BoM still in my bag. I pulled it out and opened to Ether 12:27 and asked him to read it (It's one of my favorite scriptures, go read it for some uplifting awesomeness). It really touched him, and he asked if he could keep it. (Um, duh, please keep it forever and always and read it FOREVER!) We invited him to church and he said he'd come, so please keep him in your prayers! God has truly prepared people to hear the restored gospel, and Jeffrey is one of those people I know is ready to receive it.

Last night we stopped by our favorite member's in the whole wide world- Patience! She's the coolest person and her daughter, Onell, is going to be a backup dancer for Beyonce one day. We were supposed to be the ones pranking the elders, but they ended up pranking us pretty hard. I'm still washing the silly string out of my hair. Onell taught me and Elder Wright how to Nay Nay- even though we're literally the whitest people on the planet. Don't worry, both were caught on tape. Debating on attaching it to this email.

This letter is already super long, but really quickly I wanted to share a little spiritual thought about goal-setting. 2016 is almost here, and New Years resolutions can be tricky to come up with. Though most of our goals consist of losing weight or learning a new skill, we should really be focusing on our spiritual goals. I was listening to Dallin H. Oaks' general conference talk from October called "Parable of the Sower" and he said that we need to be spiritually fed or we will spiritually starve. If we're not reading our scriptures daily or attending church or saying our personal prayers, our spirits will long for that nourishment we're denying it. It's so easy to get caught up in every day life and forget to make them a priority, but if we don't keep up our good habits, it will really negatively effect our lives. I promise if you set goals that help you strengthen your testimony, 2016 will be the best year of your life! Your goals will match up with Heavenly Father's goals, and THAT'S when the miracles come into play.

I love you all so much! Out with the old, in with the new! Happy New Year!

-Sister Brett