Snow and new investigators!

We have several places to go this Thanksgiving- it’s one of the few times that we have multiple open invitations. We also get into a bunch of member homes, even for a little while. And we more often get left overs. o: It never occurred to me that you wouldn’t send missionaries home with left overs until I came out. That’s the norm during at home. ): (VERY glad that she’ll be taken in for such a special holiday!!)

We also got the news articles (about Paris and the clarifications made to church policy); thank you. It’s nice to have a clearer picture of what everyone is freaking out about. Apparently many other missionaries in other missions haven't been told about the clarifications to the handbook. So they're having a harder time in some cases and they don't know why.

So we did get snow this week- 9 inches of it in one go. Mercifully we were inside for the whole time (smart/inspired planning on our part), but it’s REALLY cold now. It was in single digits the other day... Our sister training leaders came over for splits and we've been almost exclusively knocking this week (I think we clocked a total of nearly 20 hours this week knocking?)... And they came without snow boots. (WHAT?!?) Because neither one had any. Sister Marsh had some problems earlier in the week because she wore flats instead of her boots and she couldn’t feel her feet at all for like 20 minutes after we got in the car.... I dunno what she was thinking, but after that I was just not having it. I bought a pair for one of them and the other wouldn't let me pay for her (she didn't have the money) but promised up and down that her Uggs were enough; I was aggressive but she wouldn't budge (Such a mother hen.). Oh well. One out of two. My companion for the day (the one who got boots) knocked for 4 hours and was otherwise warm enough.

In our knocking escapades, we have met a couple of cool people- one wasn’t interested but invited us back for lunch the next day since she was making stuff for a Mary Kay party. I do like pulled pork sliders on pretzel buns - we had lunch. Another replied she was Catholic, but upon more talking she invited us to have some of her cookies she just baked (SO SOFT AND WARM) and invited to come back and tell her more about the Book of Mormon. Nice. The last one of note was a man from Romania with an eastern Orthodox Catholic background; he teaches sociology at the community college. His fiancé of 8 years is Calvinist; he was super enthused to have us come back and teach them more.

We saw the new video they're putting out on christmas.mormon.org (it doesn't come out until the 29th officially so I don't think it’s on the website yet), (it is, I checked!) and it’s pretty sweet. If you haven't seen last year's yet, I do recommend it. It’s called "He is the Gift". You should be able to see it on YouTube if you don't see it on the christmas.mormon.org website.

As for investigators, the two Chinese people we were working with essentially said “no” to baptism because they're still not sure about Joseph Smith being a prophet, and that’s one of the required questions for being baptized. But she otherwise wants to be baptized.  All in good time. She said when she knew/got an answer to her prayers, she would come back here and be baptized. How long from now we don't know, but I am happy to fly back here to be there for that if it comes down to it. Hopefully she'd return with her husband and daughter and all get baptized together. One can dream. But we made amazing headway with her - she'd never believed in God or even prayed before we got here, and she's accepted everything down to the word of wisdom... So! The Lord knows. He has a plan. It'll be okay. (What amazing experiences she is having!)

Love you! Love the Gospel. The church is true.