CHRISTMAS WEEK

Hellllllllooooooooooo family!!! IT WAS SO GREAT TO TALK TO Y'ALL ON CHRISTMAS! That was by far the highlight of my day. I LOVED it! So this past week has been kinda weird just because it's the holidays. It was weird as well though just because we had a wager going with our zone leaders. Our goal was to hit the standard (20 lessons, 60% member present, 1 investigator at church, 2 new investigators). That is hard on a normal week sometimes let alone Christmas week! We lost 4 working days (Monday because of zone conference, Tuesday because of a delayed preparation day, Wednesday because of Christmas eve, and Thursday because of Christmas) so we literally only had Friday Saturday and Sunday to get most of everything we needed in order to hit the standard. It was rough. We almost made it too!!! We didn't get our last investigator that we needed. We were so close to getting a new investigator on Sunday night too, and then it just didn't happen. We did get to see some small miracles though, and I am sure we had Heavenly Fathers help in meeting the standard as much as we did. It does make me wonder though what else we could have done. But it was cool to see people put in our path and we now have some definite potential new investigators for this next week :) The zone leaders were able to hit the standard so good for them! But now we have to buy the zone leaders 'Andys' frozen yogurt. IT'S KILLIN' ME! I was dead set on NOT loosing. Oh well. It was fun! And we wouldn't have done nearly as well as we did this past week if we hadn't had that little wager. Us and the zone leaders were the only ones who really did good this week in the zone. Everyone else's numbers were really low. I got to go to Bass Pro on Tuesday! You should go online and look it up. It is a hunting and fishing store, but there is soooooo much more to it than that! It is AMAZING. You should definitely look it up and take a peek at all the coolness :) We got to watch Frozen as a zone on Wednesday :) That was super fun! We went to a members home and they had a flippin' theater room! It was pretty sweet! We also took guesses as to who was going to be transferred and what assignments people would have. I took 2nd place in the guessing ;) Pretty sweet Let's see. On Christmas right after I finished skyping y'all, me and Sister Nelson headed outside with some nerf guns and had a battle. The gun fight ended when Sister Nelson shot me in the head and we ran inside laughing to take a picture of the welt! It was super funny! OH! So, we are trying to come up with a name for one of Bishops horses. He is brown. Any ideas? All of mine got shot out of the sky. Haha We also got to spend some time with Lauren Kelso. Sister Kelso said that I should go to BYUI and be Laurens room mate. She was also talking about adopting me and Sister Nelson. They are a fun family :) We had transfer calls as well on Saturday night. Any guesses as to where I am going? ;) I'M STAYING IN SPRINGFIELD YSA WITH SISTER NELSON!!! And I am super happy about it! WOOHOO! Here comes another awesome 6 weeks :) So, yesterday was pretty crazy, mostly because in order to hit the standard we needed to get 10 lessons! Aaaaaaahhahhhhhh!!! We got the 10 lessons though :D It was close, but we got 'em! One of the last lessons that we had that day was really awesome. It was with Jon. He is a less active, and I am pretty sure that I have told you about him before. Any way, it was such a good lesson! I was a bit nervous because we hadn't had any time to plan his lesson so we were going into it with only a slight idea of what to teach. It was directed by the spirit though and we were able to finally understand what his concern is I think. I honestly think that the root of all his problems right now is that he doesn't know that God loves him. He said he want's to believe that God loves him, but he can't understand why He would. That was one of the coolest moments in my mission because at that moment I got to feel the spirit so strongly bearing testimony to me that God did love Jon. And I told him so! And I told him that until he knew for himself that God loved him, to remember that Sister Cryer knows that God loves him. All I can say is that I hope the spirit was as strong for everybody else as it was for me! At the end of the lesson I asked Jon if he would say the closing prayer. He said that he could try. It took him a little while, but he did it! I was so proud of him!!! It was one of the simplest most beautiful prayers I think I have ever heard and by the end of it both me and Jon were crying! It was amazing! The only damper was that I couldn't jump up and give him a hug, and I really wanted to! So I told Ryan to do it for me! There ya go. That's the spiritual experience for this week :) It was a good one :D Well, I guess one more kind of cool thing. We had a lesson with Zach (recent convert) on Sunday. He is doing so good! Me and Sister Nelson were talking about it afterward as we were walking to an appointment. Basically he is just different. He is confident and happy and good and better and...he is just doing so good! And the cool thing is that you can see it. I have never really been able to see the "difference" that people talk about until I saw Zach yesterday. It was so cool and I can't even describe it, he just 'looked' lighter and happier and like he had the spirit with him. It was the coolest thing! I am so happy for him :) Well, eth, thet , ethe that's all folks! ;) Get it? That's from bugs bunny Love you all! Have an amazing week and an awesome new years! Blow the horn extra hard so I can hear it! :) Sister Cryer (December 29 email)