What a crazy week it's been! My new companion is Sister Beach. She's from Washington State, 19, never stayed away from home, and just arrived here from the MTC. We get along great and she's excited to be on the mission! I am also one of the new Sister Training Leaders and I'm over 3 other companionship's. I'm excited since I love the sisters I have stewardship over and it's going to be an awesome transfer! There were only 4 sisters that came in this transfer because all of the foreigner's visas didn't come in. We have about 4 Elders who came in this transfer who are foreign, they're sending a lot of them to our mission in the next couple of months! Also a Spanish sister companionship moved in with us in our house this transfer. The more the merrier I guess!
Wednesday was transfers and we had a lot of appointments that night. I felt bad for Sister Beach because we were running from one appointment to another and I didn't have really time to explain anything. But I'm glad the night was packed so Sister Beach jumped right into missionary work. The next day we had our Mission Christmas Party! It was a lot of fun. We started off the Party with going to the Mesa Temple. It was neat to see everyone in white and to do a session with President and Sister Nattress. We had lunch and did Minute-To-Win-It games. Then we presented all of our 5 minute Christmas Skits to the mission. We did a twist of "It's a Wonderful Life" with missionaries instead. It was a great time to be together with the whole mission and have some fun. We had a mini devotional at the end where we talked about how the imagery of light is associated with Christ. One of my favorite scriptures related to Christ and light is D&C 88:50, "Then shall ye know that ye have seen me, that I am, and that I am the true light that is in you, and that you are in me; otherwise ye could not abound." I know Christ is our Savior and the Light and Life of the World. Light will always conquer darkness; with Him there can be no darkness. I know He lives what a wonderful gift that is to each one of us. They then had balloons for each of us with a light attached to each one. We sang Silent Night and after the first verse we let go of all of the balloons into the night sky. It was so beautiful to see all of the blue, red, and green lights twinkling in the night sky. What a neat symbolism!
This week we had a lesson with our investigator, Sierra. Her baptism is going to be on Jan 22ndbecause of the holidays and we want to everyone possible there instead of Jan 4th. They downloaded the Gospel Library App and they're reading it together as a family. We're hoping Sierra's dad will come around soon so we can start teaching him as well! We're trying to find new investigators and the other day we were driving and we saw a sign that said, "Heaven Help Us Please!" So naturally we turned around and went up to knock on the owner's door. It was a little old man that opened the door. We said, "We saw your sign outside and here we are to help!" He just laughed and said it was for political reasons (sigh). We ended up having a very good conversation with him about the Plan of Salvation (his grandson had died a couple of years ago from cancer at the age of 16) and the Gilbert Open House. We're going to go back and show him and his wife the Temple Video Presentation. Unique finding activities! We've been seeing a lot of tender mercies from Heavenly Father! We were also able to go see the Christmas lights again! It was Sister Beach's first time. One of our Recent Converts had all of her non-member family come so we were able to go. It was a great night and the Christmas are always magical! I'm glad I was able to go again! This past Sunday all of Sacrament Meeting was music and it was very touching. The choir did amazing and you could feel the spirit very strongly. Til the Christmas Season! I'm so grateful to be serving the Lord and even though I'm away from home, I am being very well taken care of. We're going to be Christmas Caroling tomorrow night and we have a lot planned for Christmas- I get to talk with my family and I'm excited for that! I feel so blessed to be here in Arizona at this time! The Lord is watching out for each one of us.
Merry Christmas!!!!
Love,
Sister Collins
Heaven Help Us Sign
Sis. Collins and Sis. Beach
Mesa Temple Visitor's Center Christmas Lights
