Called to Serve: week 7: we are the THANKFUL sisters ;)

A week of gratitude and thanksgiving as we wrapped up November this week!!! Doing Russell M Nelson's #givethanks challenge was a great way to focus on all the many blessings in my life and made me look forward to #lighttheworld in December! Go check out comeuntochrist.org/light-the-world-2020 to download the service calendar and end 2020 serving like Christ would! I am so excited for the Christmas season!!

2 p-days this week with Thanksgiving on Thursday! We got to sleep in an extra hour and did studies until noon. Then we went to a chapel for some lunch and district games(3 hours of nerf war-don't ask why the APs have 8 nerf guns bc I don't even know haha). We came home at 5 and got to call family and chill. My comp and I decorated a gingerbread house, then played Egyptian rat slap with the other sisters in our apt.

Alex's baptism was Saturday!! It was so sweet! His mom is a convert who was baptized in 2013, but nobody else in his family joined when she did. When Alex finally decided to attended the YSA ward he loved the spirit he felt and wanted to feel it all the time. He loves to study "the book" as he calls it and is chugging along on his studies of the book of Mormon. Both he and his mom bore their testimonies at the baptism and the spirit was so strong!!

But 2 funnies on Alex! First was when he had his baptismal interview. Our district leader who does the interviews always uses a lemon analogy to explain tithing and we knew he would try to tell Alex, so last week when we taught him tithing we stole the analogy. When Elder Singler went to explain his analogy, Alex told him he knew the analogy already and we DIED laughing when Singler was all confused about it. Had to be there haha. Second was the actual baptizing. Alex is about 6 feet tall and twig skinny. We only had access to a child font, so when he went to get dunked, his grandpa had to physically shove him DOWN into the water and we were trying not to laugh at the awkwardness of the whole situation. Too funny!

We have also been speaking in sacrament meetings off the hook every week! We speak in about 3 wards a week and just jump from one ward to the next. Even after 3 Sundays, we have barely made a dent in visiting all of our wards. The last 2 weeks we spoke on gratitude and giving thanks to Heavenly Father for our blessings and in the coming weeks we have talks prepared on the light the world initiative and how we can serve like Christ. It is a great way to get to know our members better and gain trust with them, and has also taught us how to whip up talks on the fly when the bishop changes the topic on us the morning of hehe. ;)

MIRACLE: Saturday night we went to get dinner at Cafe Rio after the baptism and had 2 mini miracles. First, we had this sweet young dad gave us money for our meals and then the cashier also gave us a discount on top of that. Perks of being a UT missionary? But THEN on the way out, my wallet lanyard got caught on the door and I didn't notice it was gone until we were 15 minutes away and I had no idea where it went. We called the restaurant and someone had turned it in all safe and sound! What a blessing!!(not trying to lose my temple recommended and TIWI driving card one month in;) )

love you all and HAPPY DECEMBER!

love sis dougall <3