Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

First things first, it was a great Christmas! We went to the Mass's house for breakfast, which was most excellent (but I still wish I could've worn pajamas...). Sister Houcek came over to breakfast as well, and we had a great time. It's always a hoot at the Mass house.

Afterwards we stopped by people in the ward to wish them a Merry Christmas. We even got a call from a Sister in the Spanish Branch who asked for two copies of the Book of Mormon so that she could give them to her friends. We were super excited and stopped by to drop them off and wish her a Feliz Navidad.

Later in the afternoon I got to talk to my family! It's super awesome that we have the capabilities to Skype, and I'm very grateful for that. I must admit that my family is really loud, and there wasn't really one solid conversation in the entire hour we talked, haha. But I love you guys! After having a ham dinner with Sister Houcek, we went out to go caroling with her. We only actually got to carol to one of her neighbors, because either no one was home or they were all partied out by that point. So.... we decided to stop back by the Mass's and carol to them! Then we enlisted Kyra and her cousin and took them to their neighbors' houses to go caroling. It was a blast! And we got to end the day the way we started it-- at the Mass's.

So I'm going to backtrack just a bit-- in October's General Conference, Elder Ballard issued a challenge:

"We are simply asking all members to pray, knowing that if every member, young and old, will reach out to just “one” between now and Christmas, millions will feel the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. And what a wonderful gift to the Savior." ("Put Your Trust in the Lord," Elder M. Russell Ballard)

Sister Wright and I decided to take this challenge, but to make it more than our usual day-to-day missionary work. We decided that we would find someone by Christmas who would accept a baptismal interview date. Well, we've been praying, searching, and trying to find someone before Christmas. Well, before you get your hopes up, we didn't find anyone. But! I am going to explain to you why it's still a miracle.

So as Christmas came closer and closer, we still hadn't found anyone. We were looking, and we had a couple appointments in which we were going to invite someone to be baptized. But it seemed as if all our appointments kept falling through, and when we were in an appointment and the Spirit was there, right as we were about to invite the woman to be baptized, her phone rang, she answered it, and the Spirit was gone.

So we continued to search. We prayed, we sought out opportunities to invite to baptism, but it didn't happen. On the morning of Christmas Eve, we were studying when we got a text-- YAY!! REFERRAL TIME! (That's what the referral hotline is listed in our phone) For those of you who don't know, Headquarter referrals are really precious to missionaries. We don't get them too often, and we take them as specific direction from the Lord as to where we need to go. It then occurred to me that a referral might have been our answer to our prayers. We stopped by that night, only to find out that the girl who asked for missionaries to visit wasn't going to be there until after Christmas. We had this grand vision of meeting her, teaching the Restoration, and inviting her to be baptized. Well, it didn't happen.

On Christmas day, we decided to go back to the area and knock, because we both felt like there was someone there who the Lord wanted us to find. We didn't have too much time before we had to Skype, but we went out an knocked as many doors as possible. Well, the last one we knocked we talked to Rich. He seemed skeptical at first, saying that he had "heard things about the Mormons." I simply asked, "Well, don't you want to know more about those things?" He thought for a second and said, "Well, yes!" We talked to him, shared some stuff with him, and set up an appointment to return. And he even asked about when Church services were, too!

And the end of Christmas day, we didn't find someone to invite to baptism. But it occurred to Sister Wright and I that our plan was not Heavenly Father's plan, and that maybe what He intended was that we find someone by Christmas who's ready for baptism, not to just invite someone by Christmas. A small, but significance difference. As I think about it, I truly believe that one or more of the people we're currently working with are ready for baptism, and that now we need to invite. Our miracle wasn't just finding someone to invite, it was finding someone who's ready.
It just makes me think of a verse in Isaiah:
"8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."

__________

As for  the rest of the week, we had a pretty low-key week. We did, however, finally have a chance to visit the less active members who live clear in the boonies of our area. Well, we had saved up enough miles to go out there, so we made a day of it on Saturday. I was so excited to visit clear out in the Chatsworth/Shamong area, and when we were driving we noticed that Sister Wright's GPS was taking a shorter distance than my GPS. We were kind of confused at first as to why the routes were different, but I decided to just follow her GPS because it was a significantly shorter distance.

WELL, we found out real quick that it was taking us on really long dirt roads (whereas my GPS was avoiding them). We must've driven about six miles on one dirt road and promptly moved onto another. Well, as we were driving, we hit a dead end:

"NO TRESPASSING-- PRIVATE PROPERTY"

Uh oh. Where were we?! We looked at the GPS and realized that we were only .9 miles from the woman's house, but we couldn't get there because of the private road. POINT NINE MILES! I was so bummed. We had to turn around and drive right back up the dirt roads. We laughed.

I don't want to drone on too much more, but I encourage everyone to go watch this video and think to yourselves about what your spiritual goals are for 2014.

http://youtu.be/lrZij9MSTRI

Love yous!

Sister Singleton

Christmas-y things.

The Mass family.

My family!