December 23rd email!!!!

hola!

well it is so good to hear from some of you this week. i cant believe we are already at christmas time...crazy!!! this week i get to talk to my family and i am SO EXCITED! members at the VC keep saying you get to call your family this week and it just makes me more excited. today we have like half a p-day...we are doing email and shopping today then on christmas is our actual p-day. we will be having a VC brunch from 10-12 on christmas to celebrate together. then i imagine i will write some letters and take a well deserved nap...plus i will be calling hillary:) this week has been another good one. i feel just so blessed to be a part of this work. i have amazing investigators and recent converts. sunday luis and xiomara were confirmed members of the church...i almost cried. the day that luis passes and blesses the sacrament i will cry. its incredible...we talked to him earlier in the week about the priesthood and he's so excited to recieve us. we were asking how he felt about his baptism and he was like "you know right after i didnt feel much different but a few days later i woke and i just felt different..so much peace and i dont want to change from feeling the way i do right now. i dont want to make any mistakes because i dont want to sin." i almost cried! he asked us how to pay tithing again..which means he was thinking about it. now luis has been to church but its been a fight each week and most of the time he would only go to sacrament...well this week i asked so we will see you at church right? " yeah at 12:50 right?" i was in aww because he wanted to go to all of church and he did! its incredible. we are already planning to use him to accompany us to lessons...he will be awesome! we have a new investigator named julia. she basically ran to us to greet us at chruch. the sisters in the ward have been AMAZING! they just took her right in and loved her and so i just know she will have a successful conversion. she has a date for the 24th of january. for funny stories this week...i got my first flat tire ever. we parked at one of the complexes here and when i got out of the car i heard this swish of air coming from the tire...then i look and the wheel is deflating rapidly. they best part is sis colon knows how to change a tire so we started to get the stuff out...but there was not wrench so our zone leaders had to come save the day. turns out there was a razor blade in the wheel...AWESOME! i also met my first prophet this week. his name is fidel. when my companion asked him if he thought he was a prophet and he answered in the positive i think my jaw was on the floor. he's not that crazy he just has some different beliefs thats all. so now ive met jesus and the prophet...whose next? maybe i will meet God. oh this week we had mission tour with Elder Hafen from the seventy...it was incredible. he is a big scholar on the atonement and so we spend like 2 hours talking about the atonement. then we had a question and answer session with him where we discussed everything from investigators to less actives to doctrinal questions. it was good. i wish you all couldve been there. im doing really well. im tired everyday...christmas lights just kill because we are on our feet all day and talk to hundreds of people. its crazy! i bet we had over 8000 people in last night...there we herds of people coming in! the lights will be ending on the 31st and im kinda ready. the lights are fun just tiring. the new sister smith did not come in this week. she hurt her knee in the mtc so we dont know when or if she is coming. hopefully this week she will be there but we have no clue. anyways im running out of things to tell.
i love you all and miss you tons!
Merry Christmas and may we all remember the true meaning of Christmas.

hna smith