December 17th, 2012

Hey family :)

It sounds like you all had a really fun week!  I can’t believe that little Ava is already 1 year old.  I bet it was a fun birthday party ha-ha.  It sounds like dad gave another one of his awesome talks!  I will be glad to hear one when I get back.  That’s pretty crazy though about that shooting and especially how it happened in one of dad's areas on his mission.  The whole world just seems to be going crazy.  I’m glad that you liked the Christmas card I made.  I sent one to all my friends and also to Tyson, Natalie, Tyler, and Julie.  Christmas is just coming up so fast its crazy.  We have our mission conference this Thursday so that should be fun.  Thanks for mailing a Christmas package.  I’m sad to hear that dad has to work so long on Christmas.  I don’t remember him having that long of days did something change with his job?  Hopefully it’s a good Christmas though.  I will plan on calling at around 6:30 or so.  If anything changes I will let you know next week or last year they let us send a text message to confirm a time also.  I’m really excited to call home and talk to everyone :) will Chantel be there?  The ward Christmas party was really fun.  Mike's family came and they seemed to enjoy themselves.  We had a lesson with them earlier in the week and invited them to be baptized.  Their oldest daughter Lyssa who is almost 25 accepted right away but Mike and Tawn still want to be baptized and they love the church they just want to wait and make sure.  But anyways Lyssa is progressing really fast and now we are planning on baptizing her this coming Sunday.  It kind of came out of the blue but she is really optimistic about it and really wants to so hopefully all goes well this weekend.  We have a lesson with just her tonight in another members home so it should go great.  The district leader and his companion are riding down to Christmas conference with us so on our way back he will do the interview.  So that has been pretty exciting.  Also Madison is still on track for the 29th of December and she seems to be doing well.  We had a lesson with her before church and one of the young women her age also was there for the lesson which seemed to help out the lesson.  But yes we are all moved out of the Patty's and into our new place.  It’s nice I like it we didn’t really unpack anything since we will be moving out soon.  We went and took care of all the paperwork at the apartments and we are going to be moving in on January 8th.  Transfers are on the 3rd and so I really hope that I stay here.  This is my 3rd transfer here and my companion this is his first area and this is his 4th transfer so I think it’s his time to go but i guess we will see.  I really want to see the rest of Mike's family get baptized.  We think once they see Lyssa get baptized that the rest of them will want to.  It was really cool last week when we were checking out with our groceries a member of our ward saw us and paid for our groceries.  It was really nice of her to do that she is a really nice lady.  Sometimes it’s hard to receive from people but luckily that subject got covered during the 1st Presidency Christmas Devotional that we need to allow people to give to us and not try to give something bigger back.  Well Court I’m glad to hear that you're doing well in your basketball games! Keep up the good work.  It sounds like you both really enjoyed the Christmas Devotional you had i bet it was really cool.  I’m sure your both excited for Christmas and to have a break from school.  Well I hope that you all have a great week!  I love ya and will talk to ya next week!

Love,

Devan