November 23rd Email

hello Family =)

It's been a pretty good week for Sister Stanger and I! Every year at the Trail Center they have what is called the Gingerbread Parade. It's basically like a Creche Festival for Gingerbread houses! It's really fun. Everyone went all crazy, and made like Nauvoo replicas out of gingerbread and what not. Our zone made Gingerbread handcarts for our zone activity last week, so we did a little display! It was lots of fun, and Elder Osmond whipped out his Donny Osmond Christmas CD just for me!!!! He is really convenient to have around at this time of year. We both got really excited when that "grown up christmas list" song came on. Anyway, we had lots of fun at zone activity. It's really neat, and it smells really good in the rec room of the TC. Also, you can sign up for musical numbers, and president gave me and some other missionaries to sign up for an hour time slot next week! I'm going to sing Oh Come, Oh come Emmanuel, and then Elder Jones and I are going to sing Beautiful Savior. I'm excited.

Sunday, Sister Stanger and I gave talks in Sacrament meeting. We spoke on President Eyring's talk from the priesthood session of conference "Serve With the Spirit." Even though I'm fairly used to talking to people now, and giving trainings and stuff, I still get really nervous when it comes to public speaking. BUT, on sunday I just prayed really hard that I would be able to have the spirit guide me, and that I would be able to speak clearly and that they would be touched. It went really well! In fact our bishop came up to us after and told us that the spirit was there, and I know he meant it. I just love the spirit =)

We have lots of great people we're working with now! =) Gary of course is still amazing. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but he has a really really bad case of lice..... Yes, I can feel mom's concerned vibes right now. We have NEVER been in his apartment, and we can't touch men anyway, so I don't have lice... haha. ANYWAY, he can't go to church because he can't go in anyone's cars, and he needs a ride. He's been trying lots of things to get rid of it, but we finally found out that he's been doing the wrong things... So, we got him some things to use and hopefully it will be gone so he can go to church. He's just amazing. Every time we teach him, he just blows me away. We taught him about the temple and he really grasped the importance of a place like the temple. He also says the sweetest prayers. We re-taught him the restoration yesterday, and he totally gets it.... We're just so excited for him! He just needs to get rid of his lice and his smoking habit, and we're good to go!

We have a new investigator named David... He has a really short attention span, and said we can only teach him in 5 minute increments. Hence the short snippet of info about him.

We also started teaching this cute little family. Viviana (15), Jonathan (14), and Adriana (9)... They are very sweet and just good kids. We like them a lot.

We started teaching Freddy and Itzel. They are awesome. They just moved into the area, and they are a cute little couple. They're not married, but living together, and they have a 2 year old and a cute little newborn. We were teaching the plan of salvation, and Itzel openly told us that she doesn't really know what her relationship with God is, but that she wants to know. She was very sincere and sweet. They are great. We invited them to be baptized, but they're not ready yet. We know they will be just fine!

There's a less-active lady we're teaching named Jinx. She's amazing. She is a piano teacher, and I am using music to bond with her. lol. It's worked so far. She has opened up to us a lot about the concerns that she has, and never did that before with missionaries. She actually went to church on Sunday, so we were really excited! =)

Today it is 20 degrees out. I'm surviving... barely.

Well, family, I love you all! take care! I'm so grateful for all of you. I have been blessed in so many ways especially this past week. Take some time this week to think about the blessings you have.... =) love you!

Sister Bonelli