December 18th Letter

Dear Family,

Christmas is in one week. What the what!?!? I can't even believe it. Also I am pretty excited to talk with you :) :) Here are the highlights..

Tuesday night we had a lesson with the guy we met a week ago who used to be Mormon but has decided to put God out of his life. Everything we said he came up with some argument so we finally just asked him to experiment, to try reading his scriptures, and praying, and going to church again and just see if it makes a difference, but he wouldn't. We just bore our testimonies and left it at that. I was kind of upset after because it made me so sad inside for him. He went from being a dedicated Mormon to not even believing in God. I just don't see how people can put God out of their lives, but I am grateful we got to share our testimonies with him. After we went caroling with our district. It was great! Except there were a lot of people who didn't want to listen, haha, sad! Where is the Christmas spirit?

Wednesday we had zone conference. It was amazing! I love zone conference so much. We learned how to better teach people about prayer and also how to use the Book of Mormon in our teaching. Those two things combined are so vital to someone's conversion. Prayer is how we communicate with God and the scriptures are a way that he communicates with us and a way that we can learn how to better follow Him. It was cool to have those broken down by President. After zone conference we had the temple shift. Guess who I saw??? Carl and Jan Robison!!!! Ah it was so great to talk with them! I took a pic with them and I forgot my camera cord so I will send it next week. They gave me a little update on the Sharon 5th ward and on the family. It sounds like everything is going pretty great in good ol' Orem :) 

Thursday it was pouring rain. It's actually been pouring rain like every day this past week. This is San Diego winter, haha weird. We had a great lesson with a recent convert today about Joseph Smith and then we had dinner with some members and then went to a Christmas concert at the MoBat.

Friday was cool because we had an appointment with a referral that we had gotten a few days prior. While meeting with her we found out that her parents actually got baptized a few years ago. We asked her why she didn't get baptized and she said it was hard for her to talk to the missionaries because she is really shy, but she is super sweet! We talked with her about prayer and the Book of Mormon and she said she prays every day and she tries to read every day. We also asked her if she had a desire to continue learning with us and join her parents and she said yes!! We really felt like we were meant to meet her. She is so great! Next we had a lesson with a member and then we had district meeting. We went over the 8 fundamentals so it was really good and then we took a Christmas picture, haha you can look forward to seeing that. We had temple again. It was rainy and cold, but fun! We still got quite a few of visitors.

Merry Christmas!

Saturday we did some service for a lady named Leila. She wanted Christmas lights put up on her house so our district helped her out. She started crying while we were doing it and she said she was crying because she was so happy and she could feel the Spirit even with us there putting up Christmas lights and that she was just really happy we were doing that for her. It was really sweet, and it was fun! I never knew I was pro at putting Christmas lights up, haha. It was quite a task though because she has lots of random bushes and trees in front of her house. The elders were kind enough to clean up her yard as well. We had an appointment with a former investigator named Clifford. He is from Ghana. His friend who is a pastor was there and kept saying that no where in the Bible does it talk about Jesus visiting people other then the ones in Jerusalem and he kept saying convince me that you are right! And we said we aren't here to convince you, just to share with you what we know to be true, but you can find that out for yourself! And then the pastor guy said that we shouldn't have to find things out for ourselves, we should just know . . . it was interesting, but we left them with some reading assignments and Clifford said he still wants to learn more. We also contacted this guy named Black Ant and he just kept talking about how the world is an awful place and we talked with him and got his information to teach him more. 

Sunday was good! MoBat was super slow and Church was great! Wenchao and Iris both came to church. We found out Iris is moving to L.A. next week :( but she asked us to send her the missionaries there and she said her roommate currently wants to meet us! So that was awesome news. A member in our ward named Tyler gave the funniest talk about dating . . . hahah oh the joys of serving in a singles ward. We had dinner with our bishop and his family tonight. His daughter served in Hong Kong and she knew the Goos! We went caroling with our district again. I love the Christmas season.

Monday we had a song practice because some of us are performing Sunday night. Then we went and helped a former investigator at her storage and then we had a lesson with Wenchao. Wenchao knows God is real and he knows the Book of Mormon is true, but he worried about getting baptized because he's afraid he wont' be able to follow all the 'regulations' he called them. We had a great conversation with him and challenged him to pray about what Heavenly Fathers wants him to do and he said he would. He gave us a little Christmas present. So nice! We had the temple again tonight. It was super busy!! FHE. We met some awesome people. We met a couple from Denmark! They said I look Danish :) and we met some kids from Germany. I really feel so lucky to be able to meet all these people from all over the world! Tonight we found out one of our fellow Battalion sisters has to go home due to medical reasons :( we will miss her so much! But we have high hopes that she will be able to return to us in a few months.

Today is super rainy again. This week in my studies I was just thinking about how important and fundamental prayer, scripture study, and going to church are. They really set the foundation for us being able to more fully follow Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. They help us be in the right mindset. I am so grateful for these tools that we have to help us become better disciples. I hope you all have a wonderful week and Christmas!! I'll talk to you in one week :) 

I love you all so much!!!

Love,

Sister Cassie Rasmussen