Coloring pictures of Jesus

To My Dearest Family and Friends!

     Hello!  Yep it’s still pretty cold here but I am doing great!  I am super excited for Christmas!  Only 9 more days!  Sister Pead's mom mailed her a little Christmas tree so we are ready to go!  We even put our presents under the tree! (well around it) We decided that we are going to wait until Christmas to open all of our presents and I am so excited!  We are going to have the cutest little Christmas together.  We are really glad that we didn't get transferred.  Yes, transfers were today!  This transfer was only 5 weeks instead of 6 because it would have been on Christmas.  So they pushed it back and this next transfer is going to be 7 weeks long.  But Sister Pead and I are still together so we are super happy.

     This week was full of so many wonderful things! So I better get started.

  Monday was District P-day.  We wore ugly sweaters, played games, and frosted sugar cookies.  It was super fun to get together as a district and not be so "missionary" but to just have fun and play games together.  Sister Pead and I made Aunt Carson's potato soup and everyone loved it.  We doubled the recipe and told them to bring their own Tupperware and then we would give them leftovers.  Every Elders dream.

Sister Gessel and Sister Curtis 

     Then we went to the Delores and Byron L's house for dinner.  They are absolutely wonderful.  They invited us over and they invited some other people from our ward.  We ate dinner and it was wonderful. Then we went in the other room and we had a lesson about temples.  The members that were there were perfect because one couple works in the St. Paul temple and the other is getting ready to get sealed in the temple.  It was great to have both members there.  The lesson went great and it was so exciting to think about them getting sealed together for eternity.  Then later on in the week we were able to have a lesson with them about the Word of Wisdom.  I was on exchange with Sister Gessel, who is wonderful by the way.  She is an amazing missionary and she has only been out for 12 weeks.  Sister Gessel is a wonderful teacher and she is really in tune with the spirit.  The day before we had a Zone Conference and President Clements talked about teaching the lessons with confidence and with power and that is exactly what we did.  We taught the Word of Wisdom with such confidence, testifying that this commandment, the Word of Wisdom, will not only bless his life but it will also bless his family.  He agreed with everything that we were teaching except he doesn't want to give up coffee.  He doesn't see why coffee is so bad.  He then told us that he will pray about it.  That is definitely a good thing to do.  We hope that soon he will be able to see the importance of giving up coffee because it is more then just a cup of coffee but it is his eternal salvation.  This one last thing is the thing that will bring him and his wife together forever.  We are keeping him in our prayers and hopefully he will be able to join her soon.  She is still getting baptized on January 4th and they came to church yesterday.:) Yay!

Sister Pead, Sister Gessel, and Sister Breedlove (they are in the Mowers ward)

     Like I said we had a Zone Conference and it was really good.  I love going to meetings like that because I feel like I am teaching so much.  Sometimes it is nice to just sit back and learn new things and learn how to become a better missionary.  After the meeting we were able to watch a movie together, for our Christmas gift.  We watched "Miracle" the hockey movie.  It was so good.  But also it was kind of weird to watch it as a missionary.  It was funny to watch it with 100 Minnesota Missionaries because a lot of that movie actually took place in Minnesota.  We know people serving in the different cities that it is talking about.  It was really fun and also sports movies are always so inspiring.  Now we are all going to work extra hard.  There was one quote that I really liked.  It was talking about how on a jersey the name on the front is always more important then the name on your back.  I started to think of this as a missionary point of view using our name tags.  The name underneath is way more important than the name on top.  Am I doing the best I can to represent Jesus Christ?

     So this week I received a wonderful Christmas package from my mom.  In it was a Nativity with a note that said, “give this to a family, you will know which one.”  That day we were stopping by the L family, she was less active for a while and her husband just got baptized a year ago.  Right now they are going through some hard times so we were going to stop by and share a message with the mom.  As we started talking with her she started telling us how she really thinks that she should start doing Family Home Evening with her kids.  She then told us how things have been really hard the last couple of weeks and she really thought that a Family Home Evening would help bring peace into her home.  Then we suggested that she could do a lesson on the true meaning of Christmas.  She loved it.  Then instead of sharing a message with her we started planning a Family Home Evening for her kids.  We started talking about how she could ask what Christmas is all about, watch some videos then talk about Christ's birth and maybe color some pictures.  I then asked her if she had any nativities or any pictures of baby Jesus.  She very sadly said no.  Right then it clicked I knew who the family was.  I told her how I received a package with a Nativity scene in it and that my mom told me to give it to a family that needed it.  Her eyes started to water then she hugged me and said thank you so much.  This is exactly what I need.  I want something that I can put out so my kids can look at it everyday.  Thank you so much.  

Remember Him as you picture Christmas this Year!

 I am so grateful that my mom followed the prompting to put a Nativity in my package.  What a blessing to this cute family.  We were then able to come back and have the lesson with them.  The lesson went great and the kids loved it!

The L. Children having a Christmas Family Home Evening!

     Sharleen S is a new investigator that we have been meeting with for a couple weeks.  We were able to find her tracting.  She is very interesting.  She has had a lot of crazy things happen to her in life but she has a great understanding of the Savior and the love that he has for her and everyone.  We have been meeting with her lot and she has a great understanding.  We even helped her rip out the carpet in her house. (Shout out to my dad!  Thanks so much for making me a hard worker and showing me how to do so many things like ripping out carpet. :)  This last week we were also able to have a Word of Wisdom lesson with her.  She was able to recognize the importance of this commandment.  Then at the end of our lesson we asked her if she would live the Word of Wisdom and she said yes.  Right then and there she even gave us the rest of her coffee.  It was amazing to see her exercise her faith like that.

     Last of all we were able to go to a Christmas Concert last night in Crystal.  Crystal is where the Shingle Creek Stake Center is.  We were able to take Delores and Bryon L with us and we were able to enjoy beautiful Christmas music.  Then the best part.  Since it was really close to Shingle Creek I got to see so many people from Shingle Creek.  It was like a little reunion.  I got to see Sister Ballif and her new companion.  I got to see Greg and Kristi B!  The one who got baptized!  And all the other wonderful families that I love!  One of my favorites is the Kirkhams!  They have the cutest kids and when they saw me they all ran up and hugged me.  It was so wonderful to see everyone.

     Well I'm out of time but I have another Mormon Message that I want you to watch.  If you ever have time to kill I highly suggest that you get on lds.org and watch the mormon messages they are all wonderful I promise.  Maybe I'll do a couple videos :)

Mens Hearts Shall Fail Them

A Secure Anchor

Okay I love you all so much! 

Have a Merry Christmas!

Love, Sister Kendra Curtis