Writings from West Virginia: Happy December!

Hello everyone! I hope no one is too cold and that December is treating you well!

This past Monday we had the chance to visit a couple members, specifically the A. family for dinner (who made some AWESOME roast) and the C. & E.'s who invited us over for Family Home Evening! We taught a little bit about being a good member-missionary, and then for their activity they wrote letters to the 4 full-time missionaries serving from the Buena Vista ward! That was a really fun activity. They had cards all ready and we wrote a little message in it so they could send it off. That was a great night!

Tuesday we picked up a new investigator! His name is J., he is from Honduras, and he is awesome! He speaks hardly any English, so we brought Brother T., who served a mission to Costa Rica, to translate for us. It was great! J.'s work schedule makes it SUPER hard to meet with him sometimes, but we have an appointment every Tuesday, because that's his only day off! That could pose some challenges in the future, but we'll cross that hurdle when we get there!

Also on Tuesday we had THREE dinner appointments! The first appointment was the S. family, who are an awesome adult couple that have been in BV for a while now, next we had the H.'s, and awesome younger married couple that invited us over for Pizza, and lastly we had the C.'s! Sister C. is the one who cuts our hair and they fed us awesome BBQ chicken and rice. That was really great! We were VERY full, but it was still really nice of everyone to offer to feed us.

On Thursday we had District Meeting! Elder Kelly did a really good job teaching us all about pushing forward and not being hard on ourselves because [feel] we aren't doing enough. The sisters brought Arts and Crafts and we made cool bookmarks for our scriptures while they demonstrated the teaching model that Elder Kopischke showed us. It was really clever and cool! We all went and had BBQ at JJ's after. Deeeeelicious!

Thursday night was AWESOME! It was the Buena Vista Christmas Parade! We decorated our Ward Mission Leader's truck with signs, and walked by the truck as we handed out #ASaviorIsBorn cards with candy canes stapled to them! We handed out all 120 cards within the first half of the parade.... oops. Next year the missionaries need to bring much more, haha. Hopefully those cards get into the right people's hands!

Friday we had exchanges with the Assistants! Elder Rueda and I got to work Buena Vista! We had a really fun time together. We saw three wonderful families that night! The W.'s, The B.'s, and The M.'s. The M.'s bore a POWERFUL testimony about missionary work, and Elder Rueda, being a convert himself of about 3 years now, was able to bear his testimony that every little thing that we do matters. A girl during his sophmore year gave him a Book of Mormon, and it took 4 years for him to read it. But he finally did! And here he is now, blessing lives.

Saturday we had the Ward Christmas Party! We set up a really fun booth in the front foyer of the church where people could come take their picture for #ASaviorIsBorn and post it to Social Media! I encourage you all to do that as well! Download the signs from http://christmas.mormon.org and post them to FaceBook! That would be a great Family Night Acitivty. Also watch the video at http://christmas.mormon.org if you haven't already and post that! It is a spiritually POWERFUL video.

Sunday was a great and busy day too! Church was fantastic, with an awesome (and emotional) Fast and Testimony Meeting. I love this church and the chance we all have to bear our testimonies. The Spirit flows when a testimony is born!

After church we had Correlation with our Ward Mission Leader, Brother T., and the F.'s, two of our awesome Ward Missionaries! After that we ran over to the P.'s to eat some awesome chili and delicious FroYo! Frozen Yogurt is the BOMB! We ran over to the M.'s family after that for a short visit with them, headed to the C's, an awesome member family too, and ended with the M.'s, a great younger couple that made awesome Cake Cookies for us. Yay! It was a really great and rewarding night.

Thank you so much for reading this email! I really appreciate it. Have a great week! Make it the best one ever!

Love,

Elder Brax Johnson