Weekly email!!! - !

Hey everyone!! I miss all of you and love you all so much!! This week was pretty good. Decatur is the most random place ever and I love it ha ha.

Tuesday

-We had a relief society activity and it was so awesome!! I got to know the ward members better which was great and they even read one of my favorite Christmas stories!! the one with the tree that is nice and lets all the animals use it for shelter and stuff and then its the one that get chosen. Dad isn't that the first Christmas book you bought for mom??

Wednesday

-We got to visit sister Bundy for lunch, we are trying to help her become more active in the church and she is our favorite person ever.

We shared a video that has the little kids talking about Christmas time and then we asked her some questions about why Christmas is important to her and how Jesus Christ is the greatest gift we have ever been given. The spirit was so strong!!

-we taught the young men in the ward how to teach the plan of salvation lesson.
-I could actually see a couple stars this night!!! I love stars so much

-I saw like the cutest family of deer and there were like four of them and it was so cute

-the young mens president was taking photos of all the youth because hes into photography and he had this big professional set up and he made us get our pictures taken too and it was so random hahah

Thursday

-We made cookies with the hughes and them handed them out to people in the ward who are less active

-We had lunch as subway with brother novak. I do not know why but people in decatur love subway I have been so many times on my mission haha. There are more subways than anything else!!

-When I was at the subway I was reaching for something in my bag and I fell completely off my chair and I was just laying on the ground in the Subway and it was so funny

-it smelled like decatur today (which means it smells like a soy bean processing factory) and there was weird misty rain stuff in the air all day so you would get wet outside but it wasn't rain, I have never experienced that in utah. Its really cool though I like it

-Also decatur processes a bunch of soybeans and stuff and so thats why is smells so strange sometimes. But i find it super funny because there are like banks and stuff named after soy beans. Like "soy capital" hhahaha

-we went caroling at an old folks home and it reminded me of provo @malery!!!!!! All the people we sang to were so so sweet and they would sing with us too which makes me so happy. There was this one lady named Welma and she was tiny and so cute and she was just the nicest lady ever!! she sang with us and she sang so loud and she loves the song white christmas so we sang it a bunch. After we would sing to them we would ask them questions about christmas and what they love about it and stuff. We had the chance to show the light the wold video with some of them and the activities coordinator named tay!! It went so super well and we had a nice talk about Jesus Christ and then the activities coordinator asked if we would come back and share another message with them!! we are so excited!!

-we stopped by a bunch of peoples houses today and tried to do some finding but pretty much no one answered or let us in haha bummer

-We took some cookies to sister bard (she is the sweetest old lady who bakes the sacrament bread she had a lot of health issues that make it hard for her to do anything even coming to church so we like to go visit her a lot and share messages. She is the sweetest thing ever and has such a strong testimony it inspires me) but it turns out she was having a really hard day so I am glad we visited her!!

-sister bards cat miss kitty lays on its back all the time and also it loves me and sister bard said the only Illinois cats lay on their back like that hahha so funny 

-we had dinner at the stoddards and they are literally the cutest family ever! Sister stoddard is literally like goals of who I want to be. She is so awesome and cute and has the sweetest family. and she served a mission in Finland!!

-We helped one of our less active members start a stop smoking workshop so that was cool! he is a really good and funny kid but he just has had a lot of problems with addictions but he wants to do better and hes been coming to church and to our book of mormon study!!

-We had our book of mormon study and we had a lot more people come this time so that was awesome!!

-We went tracting in the rain for our last hour of the day and I thought it was so fun because I love the rain, we got to share the light the world video. No one was interested in hearing from us again but we got to meet some really nice people and talk about christ!!

Friday

-Today I have officially been a missionary for one month!!! ONly 17 more monthes to go

-I keep doing the weirdest thing ever where i wake up in the middle of the night and I think the alarm goes off like a bunch of times!! I think I am just really terrified of the alarm going off or something haha.

-We were trying to contact a bunch of people in this kinda scary neighborhood and it was dark and no one was home at any of the houses haha. But we were going up to this house and I was like staring at the top of the house because I thought I saw a face of the top of the house and it scared me so bad but it was just a piece of paper but we like sprinted away from that house when no one came to the door bc we were so freaked out for some reason

-we had an interesting dinner at a members house and it was cornbread, pizza, doughnuts, soup, and salad it was a very interesting combination. We shared a christmas message with them and it was nice and also we got to see their fishes and one of their kids who is about to move to college said the funniest fact which was "I heard that 90% of betta fish die from being stung by a wasp so we should probably cover out the tops of our betta fish tanks because there was a wasp in the basement" and then his brother said "where the heck did you hear that" and I started laughing so so hard it was hilarious.

Saturday

-we helped sister bard make the sacrament bread which was a great time and we also picked her up and orange soda before we went over because its her favorite, i think thats the cutest thing ever!!

-We tried a bunch of people again like potentials and people we were teaching last week but nothing worked out sadly no one will answer the door for us haha. But we went and tried a less active member to bring her some cookies and she wasnt there. but her house is super interesting hahah its literally like covered in eyeballs and they are eyeballs all over and even the doorbell is an eyeball and there are halloween decorations still up and some interesting drawings all over the porch. 

-after the eyeball house we were walking around and we say this house and there was a little girl playing in front of it and I really felt like we should go try it out and so we did and the mom of the little girl let us in and let us share a message!! she said we could come back and start teaching her the lessons so I am super excited because this will be the first person that I will get to teach since I have been here!!

-we went to visit someone from the ward to share a message with her and she ended up being super sick and she needed to go to the emergency room so we took her to the emergency room and we were worried for a sec but she is ok

-we went to a super posh party and it was cool. It was a dinner party at our ward mission leaders lakehouse. It is literally the biggest house I have ever been in and I can't belive its in Decatur haha it so fancy!! It was his work party and there were a lot of people who weren't members of the church there and we got to share a christmas message which was cool!!

-there have been beautiful sunsets like everynight this week which has made me so happy. there is not a lot of nature stuff around here so I kinda miss that haha. But one thing I was blessed with this week was incredible sunsets that made me feel so so happy!!

I hope all of you are having a great christmas season!! I miss all of you all love you all so much!!