1 Christmas Down!!

Hey everyone!

Elder Rosenlof here coming to you live from beautiful, warm, and sunny Ventura, California. It's another beautiful day, and I'm yet again in a wonderful mood and still working hard to perform the Lord's work. Life can't get much better.

This week was good, but work-wise was pretty uneventful. People around here are none to keen to talk to us this time of year, which I honestly find kind of funny. They will tell us that they already know the true meaning of Christmas, and yet they refuse to talk about it for 5 minutes. But nonetheless, we were able to talk to a few wonderful souls, and we're still working hard with our investigators. Kayla is doing great! She wanted for a bit to move her baptism to the 1st, but now we're having it on the 17th. She kinda freaked out because she felt like things were moving a little to quickly, so we pushed it back a bit to help her feel more comfortable and ready. She's still super excited though and she's feeling more and more ready everyday. Gary is doing pretty good as well, but we weren't able to see him this week. Their whole family has been a little weird this week, but I'm pretty sure it was just some holiday stress and that things will get back on track this week. Things are also starting to move along with another investigator we have named Naomi. She just recently married a really solid member, and she's been taking the discussions for about a year while they were dating because she was curious about what he believed. She didn't really like the missionaries that she's worked with before, but she seems to like us because she's been very proactive at scheduling appointments and keeping commitments. We're hoping that we'll be able to help her gain the solid testimony that she is searching for.

So for this week, I wanted to talk about my Christmas experience this year. This year was one of the greatest Christmases of my life. Not because I got a lot of stuff or because I had a ton of fun, but because I was able to focus on the true meaning of the season. I didn't have the distraction of the world to draw my attention to the receiving aspect of it, so instead I was able to focus on giving. One of my new favorite quotes is by President Monson, and he says, "He who gives money, gives much. He who gives time, gives more. But he who gives of himself, gives all."

I hope you all have a great week this week! Thank you for the prayers and letters and emails! Keep on keeping on everyone.

Much love,
Elder Rosenlof