Happy slightly-belated Thanksgiving! Merry bit-too-early Christmas!

Thanks for all the letters from Vail! They were really cool. I liked all the illustrations. Glad you had lots of fun and how did Tom tear his acl? I missed that. I’m guessing it was a pretty similar situation as to last year when he sprained his wrist and busted a couple ribs. Or did he get more creative? Hope you feel better soon, Tom! You’ll be back to Tai chi-ing in no time. “Sun is warm. Grass is green.” -mr. miagi

Hey guess what? It’s cold! Wednesday it was 75, Thursday it was 10. I’ve got da sniffles. So sorry for all the little extra expenses at Walgreens and the Dollar Store this month… don’t send me anything for it though. By the time it arrives it will be spring ? I also just found out I have to fix the bike we borrowed from some
members months before I even arrived here, because they’re moving. I bought a wrench to see if I could get the back tire back on that I popped off really torquing up a hill. If not, I might have to take it to the shop. I named it Purple Whatever II. We’re not riding anymore for a while. It’s too cold. We’re figuring out the buses.

We got around this week. Friday we drove 108 miles. We’d been saving up for this little road trip to go see less actives in McClouth, Oskaloosa, Ozawkie, Perry and Le Compton. It makes one big loop, but didn’t go so great, because of my awesomely superior navigating skills and mapquest’s very clear and specific, well-written directions (does sarcasm travel over the internet?). Anyway we somehow never even saw Ozawkie and went about 30 miles too far to Meriden (which is technically still our area) and asked the nice pierced person in the gas station for directions. They were pretty good after a lot of missing turns and me jumping out and backing, we finally made it to our dinner appt. Which went great and this family had taken a big leap of faith recently by closing their restaurant which had been their dream, because it kept them from church on Sunday and really being active and they had to sell liquor to keep it open. He said he felt spiritually desensitized and it wasn’t worth his salvation so without having any backup, they sold it. And that’s where
they’re at now. Nice house. Nice cars. Few kids. No job. And I’ve never seen those kids so happy or had as spiritual of a lesson with that family. We’d always just met with them in the restaurant with Thai pop playing in the background and the dad running in and out. I felt really just humbled at the sincere love and trust they had in the Savior that you could see just by looking at them. All the frustration from the 108 miles of missed turns and turn-arounds had melted away when we stepped
into their home.

We had a good Thanksgiving. It was strange thinking about everyone out snowboarding and napping and carrying boxes of food and decorations up 3 flights of stairs into the condo. It’s just not a holiday without some kind of heavy labor involved. All I had to do was share a spiritual message. Huh. Weird. We ate dinner at the Hansens, which is the Colorado Springs equivalent of the Nimers or Christensens, but younger. Sister Hansen is the Young Women’s president and has 6 kids, 12 to zero
and she is everywhere doing everything. She also happens to be related to my mission president. She’s a super mom and actually didn’t even sign up to feed us. A different couple had, but their kids couldn’t come home, so she said the more the merrier to all 4 of us.

I’m taking my sniffly self to bed today, but I’ve got some pics I’ll send home in a card before I hit the pillow. There’s a good one of me next to a field, because we got into a spot that was just so perfectly in the middle of nowhere we had to take a picture with some cows.

The world needs the Book of Mormon. It needs a prophet. And the more people I talk to, the more convinced I am of this fact. I have a testimony that this work is really important. I don’t know if it’s been important for anyone else yet, but it’s definitely been important for me.

Love you all.

Hermana Deb