Sister Marli MacLay: "It snowed 10 inches in 10 hours in Lubbock".

Yeah it snowed like 10 inches in like 10 hours. And Lubbock does not know how to deal with snow. But neither do I so...

Alright so this week was the bomb. Starting with Sunday, we got to go to the Christmas devotional and it was SO GOOD! I got to sit behind this man named Doyle who is deaf, and so I got to watch the sign language interpretation. He was signing along to all of the songs and it was so precious. After the devotional, we saw this college-aged looking guy there so we went and talked to him! Turns out, his physical therapist invited him to come and see the Nativity! His name is Sammy and he's Ethiopian. He loved it and said he would come visit us at our Light the World booth on campus the next day! And he totally did! But we weren't there at the time he came because we were having a lesson with Eddie, so that was a bummer. But he is definitely someone with a lot of potential...hopefully he's not going home for the holidays!

Speaking of Eddie, we had some amazing lessons with him this week! we have had a lesson with him each day, sometimes over the phone. He is starting to recognize the spirit and it is so cool to be apart of! We taught him how to pray to. I love hearing people say their first prayers because they are so sincere and heart-felt. He's a pre-med student and yesterday on our phone call he said, "Maybe I shouldn't be a doctor. Maybe I should help people like you guys and be a missionary." It was so precious. Sister Kitterman and I could just see him as a missionary, going back to his home country of the Congo or something. If y'all could keep praying for Eddie, that would be great! He will be going to Amarillo this week after all his finals and so we will hopefully be able to do a lot of phone lessons during the winter break.

Monday night we got to go carol for the elderly and I have never felt more ALIVE. I miss all my old people in Brady. We had some nonmembers come that we met at the booth too!

K Tuesday was the day I took a few steps out of my comfort zone. I was apart of 2 musical numbers at zone conference and I instructed for the first time. AND it was actually 2 zones combined so even more missionaries (: My companion and I instructed on goal-setting and planning and it went super well! I created a little outline thing for it to help people with their daily planning and now they're using it at all the zone conferences lol.

I also went on my first exchange as a Sister Training Leader! We are over 10 sisters. If anyone has any good leadery advice, I'd love to hear it. But yeah, I went on exchanges with Hermana Mecham and it was awesome! I learned so much from her!

So our washer broke and so a member offered to do our laundry lol. BUT the color thing was we were leaving her neighborhood and there was these two college-age guys hanging up lights in front of their house. We were prompted to go talk to them, so we parked down the road and walked up to them. They were the cooolest ever! Their names were Jonah and Noah. They called themselves the aquatic jews. But after having a really good conversation with them, showing them a light the world video, and talking about what we do, Jonah offered to make us hot chocolate to-go. He brought out these super nice Starbucks mugs and two sweater that their sister had crocheted! They were like, "it's cold. our sister sells these and she wants y'all to have them." It was super sweet! They told us to keep the mugs and come back anytime for refills so YOU ALREADY KNOW. And then we saw Jonah today at Hobby Lobby too lol.

Yesterday we got to help clean the temple too! The maintenance guy gave us the whole behind-the-scenes tour and even took us to the roof. it was awesome.

Welp it's time to dip! I hope al of you can find ways to #LightYourCommunity Definitely go watch or re-watch the video! There's also some really good ideas! >>> https://www.mormon.org/christmas/week-2-light-your-community

Love y'all!

Sister MacLay