FINDING CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS

The Sisters:)

Hello everyone! I hope y'all had a wonderful Christmas! I was initially nervous to be away from home for Christmas, but serving as a missionary during Christmas time has been one of my favorite experiences so far! The Christmas spirit is so tangible as a missionary, as we have gone around teaching others more about Christ and serving as representatives of Him. 

Our Zone at President Freckleton's house 

Our investigators are all doing great! We had lessons with most of them the beginning of this week, and they are all SO CLOSE to baptism. They each have their little personal concerns, but they are all amazing and we know that the gospel is just what they need :) 

During this Christmas season I have come to know more about our Savior and what His life truly means to all of us. On Christmas Eve Sister Nalder and I were able to spend the evening with the Stevens family, and after dinner we sat in a circle to read a cute little Nativity book and sing Christmas hymns. We also were able to visit with the residents in the nursing home both on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and sing Christmas songs to them. Our zone then had the wonderful opportunity to serve at the Ronald McDonald house in the evening and prepare a dinner for the families that lived there, and then conclude the night at our stake president's house with his family. We again gathered around the piano in his living room and sang Christmas songs together. Lots of singing and visiting with strangers on Christmas, but it was the most amazing Christmas ever. It is easy to get caught up in the presents and gift-giving, but I realized that the most important gift we can give back to Christ is our hearts, our desires to serve others whether we know them or not. 

I am absolutely grateful for this opportunity to serve God's children, especially this time of year that we had to celebrate the birth of our Savior. I am so grateful for His life and His example. I have felt so much love from my Savior this season, and I hope that y'all felt that love too! He truly loves every single one of us more than we can comprehend, and that is truly why He was born... because HE LOVES US! 

I love y'all so so much. Hope y'all had a wonderful Christmas season! 

Old Town Helotes, Texas

Old Town Helotes

1 WEEK UNTIL CHRISTMAS!

San Antonio River Walk

Hi everyone! Can you believe that it's only one week until Christmas?! I am seriously so excited! We had a lot of service opportunities this week which I was so glad about! It's hard to find service opportunities near the city, and especially in a YSA ward. But we tagged along with some of the other sisters in our district and helped their members and less-actives with moving stuff this week, so that was awesome! 

Lessons with our recent converts and our investigators are still going great :) Lots of them are leaving this week to spend Christmas with their families, so we're about to do a lot more contacting again, but we were able to Skype Mae this week! She is our investigator (basically member) that is getting baptized in January, but she is super sweet and agreed to Skype with us during the break! So we read the Book of Mormon with her, it was just cool to be able to use technology for missionary purposes haha since we don't get many chances to use it for that. 

We also taught Indira 2 lessons already! The Spanish has been alright haha, still trying my best to understand most of what is going on, but she has already read through the first few pages of the Book of Mormon! We also met with Carlton this past week. A few weeks ago we met him through contacting, and when we came back he was like "I didn't think you guys were really going to come back!" Oh my goodness, this guy is so hilarious. My face hurt so much the rest of the night cause of how much I was laughing! We sat with him and got to know him a little bit, and he has such a strong testimony of Jesus Christ! Every little bit in our conversation when he would talk, he would say "I'm just so grateful that you guys came by today, I love talking to other people about this kind of stuff." And he basically set up our next appointment! "I'll see you next week for Bible study!" Love that guy :) 

Sunday was SO GOOD yesterday! Hermana Nalder and I taught Gospel Principles and talked about service, and in Relief Society the presidency talked about the different perspectives of Christ's birth in the New Testament and the Book of Mormon. One of the greatest gifts Heavenly Father has given us is the gift of His Beloved Son, our Savior & Redeemer who knows us and loves us perfectly. I hope y'all have a wonderful Christmas day this next week! 

San Antonio Mercada

River Walk

I'M DREAMING OF A WHITE CHRISTMAS...IN TEXAS!

SNOW!!!!

TRUE STORY! It snowed in Texas!!! 

It dropped down to the 40's on Wednesday and Thursday since it was raining so we've been wearing our boots and coats haha, but Thursday night when Hermana Nalder and I came out of our lesson with our recent convert Elizabeth, it was snowing!! We were seriously so so excited, our member probably thought we were crazy cause we couldn't stop freaking out about it haha :) But that was seriously a tender mercy for me to see the snow. Heavenly Father knows me too well and knows that I've been missing the snow too much :)

And we also got transfer calls this morning! Hermana Nalder and I are staying! I'm so glad I'm finishing my training with Hermana Nalder, and that we still get to work together with the YSA! We seriously are working with the best people right now, I love it :) 

Us and Cassie (member)

Yesterday we had Friend Sunday, which is where we had the members invite non-member friends to church! Whenever we do Friend Sunday, we try to keep the topics simple for classes & sacrament meeting, so yesterday the whole theme was about Christ and how to find Christ in Christmas. It was super good! The Spirit was so strong! We talked to a lot of people yesterday at church and they all said that they enjoyed church. So we are hoping that we see them again soon! :) 

Also yesterday after church we had a dinner made by the bishopric, and before we got our food Brother Hernandez called us over and was like "hey these 2 guys want to talk to you!" So we talked to Marco and Maconi who we think go to the spanish branch since their records aren't in our ward, but we both recognized them cause they stop by in our sacrament meetings pretty often. They talked to us about their friend Indira who also came to church yesterday, but is a foreign exchange student from Colombia, and they want us to teach her! So yeah a lot of stuff happened at dinner with that, but long story short--we get to teach in Spanish! I'm super super excited about it! I can barely speak the language right now haha, but I know this is going to be good for both Hermana Nalder and I to practice our spanish :) 

So our mission is BIG on doing ministering visits, which is when we bring members with us to our lessons. Church leaders have promised us that as we work with members in our missionary work, we will see more blessings and more progression with our investigators. Our mission has had a hard time seeing those blessings though recently, so our whole mission joined in a fast last sunday to claim the blessings promised to us of doing ministering visits. And ever since then we have seen some amazing miracles! A few days ago, we got a text from one of our members who is dating our investigator Ryan. We haven't had very many lessons with him because we usually just wait for the member to set up the lessons, but she texted us and said that he wants to take the lessons regularly! And we've already seen a few more little miracles yesterday with all of our members that brought friends to church. 

It is so cool to see how God's work is moving along here in the YSA ward! I love serving here so much and it is amazing to see how this gospel is having an impact on peoples lives as we work with the members. 

I love y'all so much & hope y'all have a wonderful week! 

Sister Garza's birthday yesterday!

On our way to the Mercado
last p-day with the zone!  

The District!

PINKY PROMISES

Sister Seymour and Sister Garza
with us at the Mercado

Hello everyone!

For some reason this week felt like it was a lot longer, but it has been so much fun! Seriously love this work so much :)   We had Zone Conference on Tuesday and it was so good! It was our Christmas conference, so there were a lot of christmas musical numbers, which was so awesome because I seriously love Christmas time!! Our zone leaders volunteered our whole zone to sing a musical number, and we kinda struggled with our song as we were practicing for it cause none of us can sing haha (as for me I was asked to play the piano for it so I didn't have to worry about singing :)) but yeah it was just our luck that we were chosen to be the very last musical number! Haha good times though :) 

This weekend they had the Messiah in our area! It's a community performance they put on each year for Christmas in San Antonio where a combined choir and orchestra perform songs from Handel's Messiah. It was amazing!! Seriously so many talented people here in Texas, and it was a great start to the Christmas season! 

At the Mercado in Downtown San Antonio!

We also did some more contacting and stopped by some potentials again on Saturday. We showed the Day 2 video of Light the World about donating clean water, and earlier that morning Sister Nalder and I went to the grocery store and bought water bottles that said all proceeds go to a clean water foundation. So we shared that experience as well in our contacting, and the people enjoyed it! We even sat with this one girl who was freaking out when we shared this message of service with her, she was like "God must be telling me that I need to go serve! I was just telling my friends earlier that we wanted to do some service this Christmas, and we talked about the idea of buying water to donate!" She was super cute, she pinky promised us that she was going to do all 25 days of Light the World! So awesome!  

I invite y'all to continue following this challenge of Lighting the World in simple ways! It is so much fun and I promise you that not only will it bless others lives this Christmas season, but you will see more blessings in your life as well! I am so excited for this time of year that we have to reflect on the gift of our Savior, and what better gift can we give back to Him than by serving our brothers & sisters this Christmas season! 

Con amor, 

Hermana Barlow

Our cute little Texas water bottles we bought as part of Day 2's Light the World