Week 22: Happy New Year!

Hi everyone!

I hope you all had a great Christmas! We did too! It was super busy, but I'll tell you more about it later. 

On Monday and Tuesday night we got to ring bells for the Salvation Army in front of Wal-mart and it was super fun! Kinda cold, but still fun! And we sang Christmas songs and people loved it! 

Wednesday we had zone meeting and it was so good! We talked a lot about extending commitments to people and following up. Then we did this little activity and had a mini testimony meeting at the end. There were a few missionaries that were asked to share their testimony of the Savior, and oh my goodness the spirit was so strong! It was so powerful and undeniable! Then we had lunch and watched "It's a Wonderful Life." It was really weird watching a non-church movie, but it was approved and President Stoker wanted all of us to watch it on Christmas Eve! Then we went to the bishop's house for dinner, and he had all 10 missionaries for the Manchester ward over. We had lasagna, which was perfect, because my mom always makes yummy lasagna on Christmas Eve! Yay traditions! Then we went to our investigators' (Carmen, Victor, and Lorena) house for another dinner and it was yummy and a lot of fun! 

Christmas day was crazy busy but so much fun! We didn't have any snow and it was like 50 degress! It was so weird, but I'm not complaining! We had brunch at a member's house (Sis. Wheeler, she's the cutest little grandma!) and then another brunch at our neighbors' (Karen and Kathy). And then we went to a member's for lunch (the Goyette's). Lots of eating in a short amount of time! Oh my goodness I was so full! After we went a saw a member (Sis. Moody) and we sang a bunch of Christmas hymns with her and that was a lot of fun! Then we went a visited Sis. Connolly. She was a less active that Sis. Turley taught when she was in Manchester. And when we went to the temple in September it was for Sis. Connolly to receive her endowment. I love Sis. Connolly! She is so cute and sweet and has such strong faith! And then we went to a member's (the Williams) for Christmas dinner and to Skype our families! I loved talking with my family! It was so much fun and so good to see them! 

We got a new investigator on Saturday! Her name is Vanessa and she's 18. We were trying to contact her older sister and aunt, who are potential investigators, but then we got to talk to Vanessa. We introduced her to the Book of Mormon and talked about how we can receive answers from it, and she said that she would read and pray! We also talked to her dad, Hubert, for a few minutes, and he seemed interested. We're going to see them again on Thursday, so I'm super excited! 

Yesterday we had a lesson with Carmen and Lorena and it was so good! We read the intro to the Book of Mormon and talked a lot about how we can receive answers and what the spirit feels like. Lorena has been reading the Book of Mormon everyday! She's so awesome! Oh and she's like 15 and she loves coming to youth activities! And they said they would come to church next Sunday! Our ward is switching to 1:00pm church, so hopefully more people will come now haha. But I am so excited for them to come to church! 

This week was so much better than last week! I am more patient with myself and less stressed out and it's great! I'm still working on talking more in lessons, but I'm doing a lot better. One of my goals for this week was to listen better and I feel like I did really well with that. It's kinda funny, because I want to talk more, but when I listened, I talked less. But whenever I did talk 

I felt like what I said was what I needed to say and it was by the spirit. 

I studied a lot on charity and love this week and I found a really sweet scripture on it. It's D&C 88:125 and it says that charity is a bond of perfectness and peace. How cool is that?! I've been working hard this week to show more Christlike love to others and I've noticed that I've been a lot more peaceful and less stressed. Charity really is a bond of peace! 

Okay, well I think that's about everything for this week. Thank you for all your love and support! I love you all and happy new year! 

Love, Sister Harper