¡Tenemos Bendiciones de Navidad!

¡Feliz Navidad Fonz Fam!

Over the past week, I've reflected a lot on what Christmas has meant to me. In my life I've made many memories with my family during this time of year and those memories are some that I will always treasure. Even from being away from my family these last two holiday seasons, I'm still able to make lasting memories as we share Christmas letters and emails and later today a Christmas call where we get to see each others' smiles. There are so many little blessings that I'm grateful for as Heavenly Father reaches out in His infinite love.

In the YSA we're having success with finding a few more people, but it's finding more solid ones that's been the struggle. We have willing members who want to get involved, but a lot flaky people. It's going to be picking up here come 2019 with some changes we're going to making to be more on top of things. We were able to find 3 pretty solid referrals for the Powell Valley Elders. We were kind of bummed that we had to hand them over, but we knew blessings were on their way. Over the weekend we did end up getting one from them though. Her name is Maria and she sounded pretty solid. We barely made it to the return appointment on time, but she wasn't there, just her dad who was sitting on the front porch and pretended, when we asked, that she wasn't there. We called her cell with no response, so we just thought she had flaked out. Then, on Christmas Eve, we got another text from her apologizing for missing out on the last lesson. She said that it was because her parents were in a heated argument so that she wasn't able to meet up, but that she wanted to learn still. So we reset the appointment to tomorrow in the afternoon and she's all good for it! It was so cool that she reached out again and so if all goes well, expect a good report next week.

The work in Tickle Creek is amazing! There are 4-5 families we're teaching and even though only 4 people made it to church, there should be at least 8-10 there regularly if the world was perfect. The member involvement outside of lessons is fantastic. This is ministering to its finest. There is a lot of teaching going on which has kept our days packed. We found this awesome young family by sharing Light the World. They have four sons under the age of 9. They have 18 month year old twins named Anthony and Benjamin. They weren't able to make it to church but they are wanting to find a church to go to and of course we know where they can find one. We're hoping to get the members involved with this family so that friendships can be established. I only have one more week of serving in this family ward on top of the YSA so we're going to go all out on finding, teaching, and baptizing!

It's been kind of a struggle to finish the BoM before the end of the year like Pres Nelson invited us to do at conference. I've been marking all the references to Christ's name which has made it a slower going, but I've learned and understood so much more about Him. I think that it's prepped me for this upcoming year's "Come Follow Me" study of the New Testament. Today's holiday(when thought of in the right way) is such a beautiful reflection of what Jesus was all about: service, giving, humility, gratitude, etc. I love it and I am so glad to be able to celebrate it as a missionary here in Oregon.

Thank you to all of you who have shared your Christmas cards and emails with me. I appreciate it so much! I love you, I miss you, and I wish you a Merry Christmas!

Love,

Elder Fonnesbeck