I made an actual list of this week's events! Hopefully this email will be more interesting than those of the past :)

Okay, it was a great week! We were riding home last night and Sister Stratton and I just kind of looked at eachother and said, "This week was amazing." Our area is really picking up!

First, we had a lesson with Claudia, a forever investigator (not the other amazing one I talked about a few weeks ago). She is great, but she's been struggling with the idea of modern prophets, and she's got 2 crazy kids so she feels like she has no time to pray or go to church or anything. And to top it all off, her brother just got killed over stupid drug stuff, so her family is going through a pretty rough patch right now. But the other day, we had a lesson with her and an amazing member, Hermana Hernandez. Claudia told her the whole story of her brother (like the 3rd time we've heard it, haha). She kept talking and talking, hardly taking a breath, and we were trying to talk about baptism and nail her down on an official day, and her kids were screaming and being crazy, and it just wasn't working! Then finally there was a pause and Hermana Hernandez chimed in, and it was AMAZING. Everything went silent and she just sweetly started to share her testimony of the gospel and baptism, and the spirit was so strong! Claudia started crying a bit, and really opened up to what we were saying. She said she would pray about baptism, and really take the time to read more about Joseph Smith and pray about him too. So great! We have a return appointment tomorrow :)

Ricardo! He's still doing great. He's set for baptism on the 11th of December. After a turn of events, we ended up having a lesson with him and our stake president, President Burnham, in the chapel, and it was great! They let us schedule another one the next day in their home, which was just as wonderful. He also got to see a baptism of a kid in our ward, and he's super excited for his! The funny thing is that we were telling him that he could choose who he wanted to baptize him, and he chose president Burnham, haha. He keeps calling him Juan el Bautista (John the Baptist) which probably isn't super appropriate, but he's super happy, and we're really excited for him!

Oh yeah, and we had Christmas! It was great to talk with my family! I didn't even cry til the very end. My poor companion, though, started bawling when her camera was held up to another screen and she could see her sister that is serving in El Salvador (and is almost done with her misison, how exciting!). It was a great day, we stayed really busy and ate lots of posole and tamales and all the good stuff. And we even got to celebrate like the mexicans! We opened all our presents in the evening on the 24th, so thank you to everyone who made our Christmas great :)

We have another baptism set up for the 11th! Her name is Yajaira, Ruth's daughter (a recent convert). Basically every time we see her she asks if she can get baptized the next day. I wish! But we've only got a few more things to teach her, and then she'll be good to go! We're working hard on her brother Braulio and her dad Cristian.

The confusing thing is that we just started teaching another couple named Ruth and Cristian! They're a little bit crazy and we only just met them, but we think things will turn out well with them! This Ruth is already a member and mostly speaks English, but her boyfriend/husband (we're not sure what their relationship is) doesn't know much about the church or Christ, for that matter. So we're going back to night, we hope things will work out with them!

And to make things a little bit more crazy, we found another Cristian to teach! He can be Cristian #3, haha. He's the son of some inactive members we just found (who sadly were asleep when we stopped by). But we had a good chat with their son, Cristian #3, and we're going back tonight too! We're thinking things will go well with him.

That was mostly our week! Evelyn, our 14 year old investigator is doing great. She's progressing slowly but surely! We just have to ask every couple of minutes for her to listen and stop talking about Justin Bieber. Nevertheless, she's doing great!

I love you all! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Make some good goals!

Love, Sister Watkins