Dearest Family and Friends,

    Thank you all for your love and support this week! It was so good to see my family on Wednesday! I miss you all so much and I'm glad to know that you're doing okay. You all look and sound great!

    For starters, on Monday we got to go to the beach for a party with our mission! It was so much fun! We had catering, football, we wore jeans, and we had some Hawaiian elders play us some Hawaiian hymns! It was so beautiful! We weren't able to get in the water, but we still had fun playing in the sand and taking pictures and talking with other missionaries. The ocean is so pretty here in Florida, we had a private beach, but you could still see the bridge going to the next key and it was lit up like Vegas at night!

    Tuesday for Christmas Eve, we celebrated by taking cookies to some of our investigators! For dinner we went to Hermana Tapia's (our ward missionary) and played games that she taught us. We ate fried pork fat... nothing like biting into something crunchy only to find more grease! :D It was great though, because Cindy and Cornelio were there and they all got super dressed up! We also had a lesson that day about the Plan of Salvation with some of our newer investigators named Paco and Antonia. The lesson went really well, they are both really excited to learn and they have a great fellowshipper!

    Wednesday for Christmas, we went over to our neighbors house, her name is Almida and opened our presents with her because she didn't have anyone to spend Christmas with. She was so surprised when we pulled out a stocking just for her filled with oranges, chapstick and candy canes. It was so good to see her face light up!  That's the part I love most about serving,  is the faces of those I've come to love lighting up with the brightness of Christ. 

     After that we went to district meeting where we had a very instructive training on how to sip hot cocoa from a tim tam cookie ;) After that we did a white elephant and I got some froggy socks!!! We then proceeded to give out cookies to as many investigators as possible, in the process setting up two dinners for that night. I've never eaten more meat in my life! We have agreed that we are going to try as hard as possible to only eat vegetarian this week! 

     We talked with our families around four which was probably the best present of the day! I call it my little family-in-a-box. The time went altogether way too fast! Afterward, I felt like I was in two places at once, because I was walking around in 89 degrees Florida but my heart was still in chilly Utah with my family for Christmas Day. 

     After that we went to the Arguetas and had more food with them (bleh!) and taught one of our investigators named Miguel about the meaning behind Christmas. The day was a huge success and so much fun!

     The rest of the week went by really fast. We did exchanges and another Hermana named Hermana Rasmussen came down and we taught with her. We had so much fun laughing and sharing stories about the mission. We went to a less-active members and he was really funny because he was trying to talk in English. Bless his heart, he was trying to say that he danced the "limbo" but he kept saying the "bimbo." We all tried so hard to stifle our laughter.

    The miracle of the week is that yesterday we had 7 investigators at church! Mike, one of our investigators who we've been trying to get to come to church for weeks, finally came! He loved it! At this point, I suppose he could be baptized this Sunday if he wanted! We also had Carmen come who is a really strong Catholic and she enjoyed it too! At our lesson with her, instead of saying "I'm not going to change" like she normally does, she said, "It's going to be hard to change." Our lessons with her are really spiritual too. She is beginning to change and it's amazing! What a blessing! I feel so blessed to be teaching these people right now, I love seeing the Lords hand at work.

     Well that's my week in a nutshell hope yours was just as fantastic! Loves all around!

Sincerely,
Hermana Mathis