Hermana Courtney Baggett-Missouri, Independence Mission: Week 32- Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a wonderful, merry Christmas and a happy new year this week! I love the holidays so I hope everyone is enjoying them too! This week was awesome...as always ha-ha but especially good!:)

All of us in our Christmas jammies!

The wards in our area are SO LOVING and wanted to make sure that the missionaries had a good Christmas, so they definitely spoiled us! One ward in the area had our whole district over on Christmas Eve morning to feed us breakfast and they gave all of us Christmas pajamas too! It was the sweetest thing; I can't believe how kind people are! We also heard of so many people bringing in others who don't have much family to celebrate with or many resources to their family parties or dinners! That is something that I love so much about the church. When you join, you automatically have way more family that you ever had before!:)

On Christmas day we went over with the elders in our ward to a family of one of the kids who was just baptized a 2 weeks ago. They had a fire in the oven last month and it didn't burn anything down but the walls were still a little more black that usual! So as a Christmas present we painted their house and it was super great! They are such a stellar family, they have taught me so much already:) We skyped with our families later that night as well and it was awesome to be able to see my family and talk with them:) It was just a week full of blessings!

Painting party!

Another miracle from the week! We are teaching a mom, her 14-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter and they are preparing to be baptized, we just hadn't set a date for when yet. So after praying about it we felt we should give them the options of the 16th of January, or the 23rd. During our lesson, Sister Cuevas felt prompted to ask the 7 year old when her birthday was before we talked about the date and she said it's on January 22!:) That answered our question right there ha-ha! So it worked out just right that they will be able to be baptized together, as a family on the 23rd:) Everything always works out just right in the Lord's work!

A little spiritual thought to close off the week! The New Year is often a time to make goals and decide how you want to be better and I encourage you to keep the Lord involved in your goals. My family and I this year are each going to pray about what we need to study from the Book of Mormon and then read 11 pages a week until i get home, sharing our thought and revelations along the way. I hope you can all find something to study from the Book of Mormon this year and I know that as we study the Book of Mormon more regularly in our lives, we will be able to feel more of the spirit in our lives.