Our branch is getting ready for our Christmas party

Hey Mom!

Well that Christmas party sounded pretty intense. Holy cow our branch is getting ready for our Christmas party as well and let me tell ya, they are getting into this. We ended church yesterday at about 12:00 so they could practice their songs and skits and stuff for the last hour. We ended up being there until a little after 2:00. Suffice it to say I’m getting my fill of piano playing. It’s kinda fun though, cause the songs are pretty boring so I get to spice them up a little. ;) The district (stake-like substance) is planning on doing a Christmas party as well so all the branches can get together. The district relief society president has been put in charge of the program for that and she’s really getting into it. . . .maybe too much. Apparently the program is like three hours long of just skits and music and other such things. So we’re going to have to talk to her about that. . . .

Anyway, thanks for that gingerbread house recipe! I might give it a try, but we’ll see. It seems like it would take a long time and I don’t know if I have that ha ha. I hope your gingerbread houses go well over there! By the way, did you notice that I sent you all some pictures last week? I hope you enjoyed them!

So missionary work.

This week actually went really well. Right now we have four investigators that are preparing to be baptized on Christmas. And all four of them are looking fairly good! Lira is giving me some weird vibes so I hope that’s just a passing thing, but everyone else seems pretty solid. We met with Leta and her two sons last night to start the stop smoking program. Her sons are definitely on board with this program. They hate that their mom smokes and they are pretty ready for her to stop ha ha. This was actually the first lesson that Xhoi (her older son) actually came to and Leta said that it was just because he heard that his mom was going to quit smoking and needed his help. So we’re excited for her to become a non-smoker next Sunday! (Well, technically she’s a non smoker right now. . . .)

We actually had something pretty funny happen to us this week that was surely a blessing from the Lord. It’s Wednesday. We have an appointment set with Dorian for 7:00 at his house. We knock the door. Nothing. We knock again. Nothing again. We knock yet again. Nothing yet again. Obviously we were pretty downhearted at that, but as we were walking down from the third floor of his small apartment building, we ran into one of his neighbors who told us that we could talk to Dorian’s uncle who lived just below her. We knock on the door together with Dorian’s neighbor and a woman answers the door and looks pretty excited to see us. We had actually tracted into her a couple days before and found out that she was an inactive member. That day, we had narrowly escaped her trying to convince us that she was, in fact, a member of our church by showing us all of her pictures that she or her daughter had ever taken with missionaries or other members. Well tonight we didn’t. Almost the first thing she said to us was, “I told you I was going to prove to you that I’m a member!” She bustled around her hallway for a minute while we were standing at her door and finds a purse that looks pretty heavy. She opens the purse to expose loads and loads of old photos. Awesome. So we end up standing in her doorway for like ten minutes looking at photos of her baptism and old missionaries and branch activities, etc. and I joke sarcastically to myself, “I bet that this woman showing us her old pictures is God’s way of stalling us so Dorian can get back to his house before we give up on him.” Turns out that’s exactly what happened! No less than a minute after I had that thought, a boy comes running into the stairway out of breath. When he saw us, he let out a sigh of relief and said, “I’m glad I caught you before you left!” We were actually able to go up to Dorian’s house and have a good lesson with him. It was just so weird/awesome to actually have that happen. God really does look out for us and, even though He works in mysterious ways, he wants us to have success.

So that was my cool story for the week. I hope you enjoyed it. I love you, mom! I can’t wait to talk to you guys on Christmas. Speaking of which, this could kinda be complicated from my end of things cause there are 17 baptisms scheduled on Christmas right now. . .so I’m going to have to work some stuff out and get back to you next week on a time, but I’m guessing around 6:00 or 7:00 or maybe even later. . .? I hope that would be okay. Oh by the way! I got a package from you this week and I’m assuming that it’s the Christmas one so I haven’t opened it yet. =) So thank you for that! Man I love you guys!!

Have an awesome week! Thanks for your letter!

-Elder Swenson