Well, its off to the great unknown!

Dear Family and Friends,

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!! I hope you all had a really great Christmas day! I know that we did. We were so blessed to have a lot of less actives at church. Can you believe that there were 10?! I couldn't. It was a Christmas miracle....really. The key was that the bishop had asked a less active family (of 6) to sing in church, we should do that more often I think! That's the key to getting them to come out to church-INVOLVEMENT! that's a fact. yup. yup.

Everyone in the ward is so great. We just got showered with presents after church it was pretty ridiculous. Half for us and half for the Pinkertons (Sis. Pinkerton just had surgery so they are taking some dow time). We almost weren't able to carry all of this stuff home! I'm pretty sure that we have enough cookies, chocolate, and Shloer to last us a lifetime and to make us each gain a stone! (a stone is like 14 lbs) I hope I don't though. I don't need to gain anything else....weight wise anyway.

The best miracle we had today was that our Christmas dinner suddenly got cancelled (that's not the miracle...) All of a sudden we had nowhere to go and we were planning on spending the afternoon in our flat studying, when one of the less active ladies came up to us and asked us if we would like to come over to her house for dinner. It was so amazing! It was the first time I had met them because they don't want visits from the missionaries. It's a less active couple with two girls who aren't members but come to church every Sunday....so its a little backwards but it was so good to spend time with their family. As we were leaving they told us that we could come back anytime! :) I love Christmas. It does such wonderful things to people's hearts. Whether you believe in God or Jesus Christ or not...you gotta admit that Christmastime is special. That's because it is all about CHRIST!!

I just started reading in Ether, and that book is pretty amazing. Heavenly Father has something with boats....but I suppose there is a good reason for it. But I picked out something cool this time. In Ether 2 he builds the boats, "tight like unto a dish" yeah? Amazingly enough he builds them according as the Lord has directed and then he asks for solutions to problems. No doubt he realized while he was buiding that they weren't going to have air or that they wouldn't have light, or a way to steer. BUT he continued to build the barges in the Lord's way because he trusted the Lord to provide a way. I started to think about how many times I go along doing something in the Lord's way but then I come with an idea that I think might be better and alter my course a little.....no bueno. It doesn't work that way. You can't do what the Lord wants and what you want at the same time....unless of course it is the same. Funny story to illusttrate my point better. ready? OK!

hehe

it's funny

I was driving (that's not the funny part), and we were going home after having dinner with the stake president and the sat nav (she's a little crazy sometimes) was directing us what road to take and things like that when all of a sudden we thought we were going on the wrong road so we turned the sat nav off and decided to go a different way. Bad idea. We ended up on some little back country road that was leading us out to the middle of nowhere. What made matters worse was that when we turned the sat nav back on she was lost too and she was no good to us because she thought we were out in the middle of a sand pit and she kept telling us to make a left at the roundabout but there weren't any! So we had a bit of an adventure off road but we eventually made to an area where there were signs and we were so far away from where we should have been! Moral of the story is: follow the sat nav. Moral of the spiritual side of the story: do what the Lord says the first time and you won't get lost!

I love you all and I hope you have a very good week!

Love, hugs, and fist bumps

Sister Benson (who apparently has an accent)