Sunday, May 6, 2018

"And on earth peace, good will toward men" (December 25, 2017)




Merry Christmas! 

I have no time today, so just a few thoughts.

We have had a really fun week before Christmas. We gave service at the veterans home, and have been fed more than a healthy amount, and our apartment is filled with Christmas goodies people have given us. Yesterday we had a musical sacrament meeting and the primary kids sang, and we sang, and we had 4 investigators come which was a miracle because many people told is they couldn't come because they would be with their families. And the high today here is -1, yes that's one degree below zero, and we've been sitting at -14 most of the day. Minnesota is just a little chilly.
And this morning, the area seventy, Elde

r Stacey and his family had our district over for Christmas breakfast, and it was fantastic. You should always spend Christmas with a member of the seventy. We performed music, and sang songs, and shared our testimonies of Jesus Christ, and it was a special Christmas morning I will never forget. 

Ok, so I've been having this really specific thought and I hope my words can sufficiently describe it. Being away from home for Christmas isn't easy. And this week, as miracle filled and amazing it has been, it's been strange because it doesn't quite feel like Christmas should and how it always has. Then yesterday in church, one of our members was bearing his testimony about Christmas. At one point he said "And many of you know how hard it is to be away from home on Christmas." I immediately thought about the missionaries, about myself, and all the other missionaries I know who are far from home this Christmas season, and how hard it is. Then as he kept talking, I realized he was talking about all of our members. Almost everyone in our congregation, their families are back home in Mexico, in Ecuador, in Peru, in Honduras, in El Salvador, and he was talking about how they all miss Christmas in their own countries and with their own families. I immediately felt so guilty, when everyone we work with is experiencing many of the exact same feelings and until that moment I had been so selfishly thinking of myself. And many of them have it so much harder than we do, many of their families don't approve of their membership in the church, many of them have no financial or legal means to ever go back and visit their families. I am so grateful for each and everyone of them and all that they had taught me. I can't even imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't met all these amazing people I have come to love in the last 10 months. Because they really have nothing, but they give everything they have to the gospel. They take hard callings when they're already working two jobs, they invite the missionaries into their homes, and make us part of their families. They pay tithing when they don't have two dimes to rub together, and they do it all and never, ever complain. And I know it is hard, but they do it joyfully. Because they have found hope in the gospel. They find hope in the message of Christmas, in the message of the gospel, that because of Christ we all have hope. This has been the most amazing Christmas, because I have spent it with my family here in Minnesota, with these wonderful people whom I love so dearly, who have taught me so much. 

Merry Christmas!
Thank you for all you do!

Hermana Meredith







1. Landon, the son of one of our recent converts, looks just like the little boy from Home Alone, so we took a Christmas picture with him. Ah, isn't he just the cutest?
2. We walked out of church to a white Christmas! 
3. Service at the veterans home
4. You've got to sing for your supper - we ate and sang about 3 different times on Christmas eve
5. We tried to make our apartment look like Christmas 🎄🎄

"Joy to the World!!" (December 18, 2017)



This has been a crazy, stressful, wonderful week full of church parties, planning for church parties, musical numbers, freezing temperatures, and food poisioning. I don't have a lot of time to write about each, but it has been great.

A few funnies from the week:

  • A dinner this week we had was chicken legs, mashed potatoes, corn, and guacomole. Perks of doing Spanish work and being in the United States. 
  • One of the primary boys who was dressed as a wise man for our church event walking around the church adamantly declaring that he had been forced to wear a dress and didn't think it was funny, then asking us "What am I even supposed to be, a magician?" 
  • We had a miracle when I lost our phone and couldn't find it anywhere, but when we went to the last place we had stopped by, there it was, sitting partially buried on the top of a snowbank :)
  • Hidden talents discovered that President Barney plays the flute! He and another sister did a musical number for a fireside last night and I got to accompany them and it was the best musical number ever. 
  • I got food poisoning from a ward potluck this weekend. 
  • You know you live in Minnesota when you get really excited and think it's warm when it's 25 degrees

The best and most stressful part about this week was "Venid a Belen" (Come to Bethlehem) the event our ward did for Christmas. The different rooms of the church were decorated differently and they were acting out different parts of the events leading up to the saviors birth, like the innkeeper saying there is no room in the inn, and the angel appearing to the shepherds watching over their flocks to announce the tidings of the Saviors birth. And it all ended in the primary room, with Jesus laying in the manger, and all the primary kids dressed up as Mary and Joseph, and the wise men, and the shepherds, and sheep, and they were singing "Away in a Manger" and it was the most precious thing I have ever seen. It was stressful because we have been preparing for this event for a while, and up to 30 seconds before it started we still had no idea what was going on, and we never got to practice doing the tours taking people from room to room, and we were basically making everything up. But it really did all turn out so beautifully.  And so many people showed up! Members, and investigators, and lots of members brought their friends. Even some members from the St. Paul ward came and it was so fun to get to see them and catch up. It's so amazing that when you're trying to share the gospel and trying to help others to learn of Christ, it's ok if it's not perfect, because the spirit truly makes up the difference. 



I can't belive it is already Christmas time again. Being on my mission through this approaching Christmas season has helped me to come to experience what the Christmas spirit should truly be about. I have always known that Christ should be the center of Christmas, but I think this is the first Christmas where I have truly experienced it. As President Nelson shared, "My dear brothers and sisters, the joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.When the focus of our lives is on God’s plan of salvation and Jesus Christ and His gospel, we can feel joy regardless of what is happening—or not happening—in our lives. Joy comes from and because of Him. He is the source of all joy. We feel it at Christmastime when we sing, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come.” And we can feel it all year round. For Latter-day Saints, Jesus Christ is joy!" He truly is the reason for the season and the reason we can feel joy at Christmastime, and all year long. I hope you all can do something this week to invite Christ into your Christmas celebrations, and remember him a little bit more than you usually would.
Thank you all for the love and warm wishes! May you all have a very merry Christmas.
Hermana Meredith

Venid a Belen, President Barney's sweet flute skills, and District Meeting (not necessarily in that order).





"Feast upon the words of Christ" (December 11, 2017)


Walkin in a Winter Wonderland

The adventures in Minneapolis continue!

I don't know if I have shared this thought before, but one of the highlights of Spanish work is getting to attend ward council. It is the craziest, most entertaining meeting of all time. We always have it before church so there's a time crunch, and we get do derailed from the agenda so quick, and end up having a 40 minute debate about if we should move what time church is at, which we weren't even supposed to talk about and something we don't get to decide, and it always just brightens my day. 

I hope you are all having a great time participating in #LighttheWorld! And if you haven't started yet, it's not too late to. This week we saw a really cool miracle. We stopped by one night to heart attack a part member family we're working with, and just quick wrote some notes and left them on their door, and didn't think that much of it. We had a lesson with them last night, and she was SO grateful to us for leaving those notes. She told us how she had been having a bad day and it really lighted her world and made her so happy that we had taken just a little time to share a few scriptures and let her know we love her. My favorite part about Light the World and about this focus on service is how it doesn't take much. All of the suggestions, all of the examples are not HUGE sacrifices. They're little things, that anyone can manage even on the most busy of schedules, even sending a text or a note, or saying hi to someone you usually wouldn't. Because when everyone is trying just a little harder to be a little kinder, to be a little more Christlike, those are the actions that can truly change the world. 

My favorite part about December is a tradition I got in Young Women's a few years ago, of setting the goal to read the entire Book of Mormon in the month of December, so 18 pages a day. I have tried many times, and some years I have finished, and some years I have had to finish the last little bit in January, but I felt like this year was a perfect opportunity to do so again. And I can't begin to tell you how much I love the Book of Mormon. I am marking all the references to Jesus Christ, and let me tell you, a page hasn't gone by yet without one. The Book of Mormon truly does testify of Jesus Christ, and what better message is there to share at Christmas time?! I hope you all will take a little more time to dedicate to reading the Book of Mormon this Christmas season, and I promise that  adding even just 5 minutes of scripture study to your day will make a huge difference and it will make you happier. "Wherefore, I said unto you, feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do."

Hermana Meredith

1. Walkin in a Winter Wonderland