Our Live Nativity

Here is our live nativity from this morning at the institute. It was a blast. We had real animals! and Mary and Joseph are a couple who are really engaged. Getting marrieddecember 29th. and one of the shepherds is even a non-member who saw the LDSSA president typing up a sign-up sheet for it in class and asked to come help!! How awesome is that!? 

Sister Santas!

My second baptism in this area

 M got baptized!!!!!! Now my second baptism in this area, where the investigator scouted us out! M saw us on campus one day and realized that we were Mormon missionaries. Just the people she had been looking for after hearing from a friend, who she grew up with who went to BYU-I, that Mormons believe that Jesus Christ is the literal son of God. Satan almost had her because her baptism was set back in October, and she started avoiding us and hiding from us. Then one day, she opened her book of Mormon randomly to a page and read a scripture on baptism and took it as a sign from God and decided to continue learning from us and chose baptism again!! :] 

My birthday!

I threw the greatest party the institute has EVER seen.  So this is how my brithday came about. So, many of you may know this, you might not, but I have picked up a very very strong addiction on my mission called, family history. Literally, every second of every day, I just thirst for it. That's all I want to do, is get on family history and find people. Every single spare moment I get, I go and get on familysearch and just do it. It's like doing a puzzle. If I ever create an addictive substance, I am going to call it Elijah. After the spirit of Elijah. Which I'm pretty convinced is more addictive than any substance on the face of this planet. The Spirit of Elijah pretty is powerful stuff. It compulsively calls to me every second of every day. SO. Someone had asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I said, "I want to do family history for my birthday!!!" And then the greatest idea I may have ever thought of popped into my head. I was going to hold a family history party at the institute the night of my birthday because it so conveniently fell on the only night of the week that there is nothing happening at the institute. There are never any set classes or activities at the institute on Wednesday nights. I tried to start a crocheting club on Wednesday nights at the institute but the only person who ever showed up to it was Kevin and not only that, but the branch was going to the temple that Friday so I thought that if everyone came to my family history party on Wednesday night, then I could help everyone find names to take on Friday to the temple AND I could conveniently be doing family history for an extended period of time and not be feeling like a jack missionary for doing it. So I threw a birthday party at the institute on my birthday. we legitimately invited EVERYONE. We invited members, non members, less actives, potential investigators, former investigators and current investigators. We invited everyone we possibly could and it was a great turn out!!! and the mitchells bought cake, and a few nice people brought presents, but I'm pretty sure that the only person who worked on family history that night was me.... whatever! I tried. But, I had 20 names to take to the temple on Friday after getting permission from President Porter to go with the branch!!! So that was good. I still have 200 names that still need to be done though.. but a bunch of former investigators showed up, like Alize!!!!!! and Emily, and Seth even came and brought John. It was just awesome. I just wanted people to come to the institute and have a good time and feel the spirit and they did. :]