Let's try this again: Hey everyone!

 

What a week!!! Christmas flew by; it hardly seemed like it was here. Elder B. and I are still keeping the tree up at least until new years, maybe longer. I haven't gotten the package yet, but maybe it came today while we were shopping. What does the USPS Tracking thing say?

 

Of course the highlight was Hensy's baptism on Saturday!!! Everything went perfect, up until the actual baptism. H.  wore the same white dress that her mother wore when she was baptized a couple months ago, and no one anticipated any hiccups. I went down into the font, raised my arm to the square, said the prayer, put her under the water, and....her toe came up. Tried it again. This time, the air inside her dress kept her dress from going under the water completely. 3rd time: tried it again. Same air bubble. Finally on the 4th try, everything was under the water for a split second. I wasn't embarrassed. I just thought it was so coincidental that on my first baptism, this would happen. Mostly I was worried what her nonmember friends and our investigators were thinking after this going down four times! But afterwards, a little nonmember kid said that he never wanted to leave the church, and the rest of the family is really interested about the church too. Hopefully we'll start teaching them this week.

 

Oh, and thanks to the handy-dandy calendar, don't forget to tell Dodo and Jimmy happy birthday for me!

 

I'll also tell you about another family we're working with. They're the B.  family: a part-member, returning less-active family that has three daughters who're getting baptized in a few weeks. They're super fun, and we've been really helping them all progress in the gospel. The husband is less-active, but he's committed to living worthy of being able to baptize his daughters - we're really praying for them! His daughters are his motivation to stay worthy. This week Elder B.  and I committed the whole family to live the Word of Wisdom, and they're really progressing! Every day we send them texts of encouragement, and they're doing great! On Friday night we did a Gingerbread House building contest, and guess who won? This elder! They may be texting you a picture of it in the next day or two. And tomorrow evening we're gonna have dinner with them again and commit them to live the Ten Commandments.

 

What Elder B.  and I have started doing in this ward is going around to the active families and giving them a list of our investigators. We share a spiritual thought about miracles, prayers, and faith, and then invite them to join with us in praying for these individuals (and for us) by name every day. It's been working great! This week we received a lot of member referrals, and so this week we'll be spending a lot of time contacting these people. The work is great!!

 

Elder Nissinen's new palace.  Pretty fancy!!!!

It was awesome seeing and Skyping with you all! I'm always gonna remember my first Christmas away from home. I hope everyone's safe and has an awesome last week of break before school.

 

Love you all!

 

Elder Nissinen