Feliz Año Nuevo!

What's going on everybody. I hope you all had a super awesome Christmas. I really didn't know what to expect on Christmas day as a missionary, but let me tell you it's way different than being at home. The best gift I was able to receive was calling home. I didn't want it to end. Seems like everyone is doing well and our family has some exciting things that will be taking place in 2019. Here are some of the highlights from this past week. 

Last Monday, our district met up at the church and we played games and did some small gift exchanges. Each of us a few weeks earlier drew a name from a hat and that name you would have to get a gift for. I got Hermana Gray a gift, but couldn't come up with any ideas. So thanks to Mom, I got her some nice lotion. We spent Christmas Eve in the apartment making cookies. We didn't have any plans for people we wanted to visit the next day, so I asked Elder Bradshaw to use his phone, so i could call some people up. I was able to get ahold a few families and by the end of the night we had some plans for the next day. Christmas morning came quickly and as always I was anxious to open my presents. Thank you so much for all the nice gifts, to mom and dad, Jacob and Kim and the rest of the family. I really enjoy them. Unfortunately the speaker I bought for Elder Bradshaw isn't as good as the package looked, which surprised me because I like tech stuff and I can tell good things from bad. So today we will be taking it back and finding a different one for him. Then we called home. I'm so grateful the connection worked out and I was able to see everyone, including Bubbs for a minute. Our family is truly the best. That evening we went by the people I had planned and it ended up being a pretty decent Christmas, but like I said the best gift I received was talking to my family. 

Now back to missionary work. It was a good break for a few days, and it seemed like we hadn't done missionary work in a week. Haha. Because it was Christmas break, we were able to contact some people and teach a few lessons, but not a lot of success. Hopefully we can work hard next week and find some new people. The next few days after Christmas flew by and before we knew it, it was Sunday. 

Last day of three hour church. It's funny now to look back in time and how everyone was talking about 2 hour church and all these changes that we wanted to happened. Then boom, here we are and two hour church is happening next week. 2019 will be a fun year for our family and for the church. Along with these changes, our mission will be experiencing some of their own as well. With the changes in Dinner times, visiting members from 8-9, and Finding and teaching after dinner, our mission will see some great differences for sure. This Sunday our branch was combined with the Toppenish Branch, and the Stake Presidency. During the sacrament meeting

the Stake President announced that the two branches would be combined permanently to form the Yakima Lower Valley Branch. This would mean that there would be 4 sets of missionaries in this branch. I'm excited about this change and the chance to talk to more members and the other missionaries.

Well that basically wraps up this past week. I will be writing to you all again next year! hah. I love you all very very much. Since we will be starting to cook our own dinners, if you guys have any good recipes, send them my way. Please be safe and have fun. 

Elder Nissinen