Feliz Navidad!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas season, and enjoying the snow! Right now it is 89 degrees and sunshiny! :)

So this past week has been super fun! Because there are three of us and like a million people in our area to teach and only so many hours in the day we've been doing splits lately. This has actually been a really great blessing because we have been able to interact with the members and reach out to more people than normal. With the Christmas season people's hearts have been a lot more cheery and open to our message and it's been great.

We had a really great lesson with one of our investigators this week named Ema. When we first got to the house, she wasn't there and only her 3 sons were, but she had told us she would be home at that time and they assured us she was on her way, so we decided to wait and teach them the first lesson because two of them had never heard it before. We started teaching and they all because very interested. When we taught the first vision, Mateo, who we had given a Book of Mormon to, said,"Lehi had a similar experience!" We were astounded! He understood perfectly and he's 16! So we kept teaching and we had their full undivided attention. They read the introduction and asked questions. About the time we had taught them the whole first lesson, Ema returned with her sister. She insisted that we teach the whole lesson again, so we did! Then with our little audience, we asked them if they would be baptized and all said yes! It was possibly the best lesson I've ever taught since coming in the field. Everything went perfectly. I even knew all the right words in Spanish! That's a first!

We also had the chance to run a 10K this week. Wahoo! I think that I should just state right here and now that before this I had never run a 10K in my life... or six miles. So when I hit the finish line, I felt very accomplished that I had not only ran the whole thing, but that I had passed out mormon.org cards along the way! It was a great experience for all of us missionaries to reach out to the people in our area. Most of the elders in our zone ran it and so did about 5 other sisters. Me and Hermana Nebecuer (my running buddy from another trio) finished before everyone else excepting a few elders, and we received medals! (I think they were just handing them out to the first 100 people in or something). I know that I could not have done it without the help of God or without the help of the scriptures. Yes, the scriptures, because when my heart felt like it was going to give out on me and my lungs were going to burst the scriptures are what we quoted to keep our minds distracted. I will send pictures next week if I have them by then.

Hermana Nebecuer & Myself after running a 10K

I read something this week that really stuck out to me that I would like to share with you all this Christmas season. It is a scripture in 1 Timothy ch. 6 v. 5-6 and it says "Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself. But godliness with contentment is great gain."

I wanted to share this because in the world today there are many who seek gain, especially with the Christmas season, but godliness, or rather striving to be like Christ, is "great gain." I know that as we strive to be like the Savior the blessings that we gain are far greater than anything earthly. May we all have our hearts turned to Christ this season.

Merry Christmas!

Sincerely,

Hermana Mathis

Ecclesiastes 3:1-10

"He hath made every thing beautiful in His time."