Those Christmas Lights Keep Shining On

QUE TAL mis hermosos amigos y familia,

SOOOO big news.. IM STAYING IN ATLIXCO. YESSS. transfers are tomorrow, Hna Salcedo is leaving to who knows where and at the meeting tomorrow I will know WHO my new companion is. STOKED.

PONDERIZING SCRIPTURES: every scripture in the talk by Jon Bytheway entitled ¨Five scriptures that will get you through anything (Thanks Katelyn (: ), D&C 88:40, Matthew 19:26, and D&C 67:13

MONDAY: so a girl in our ward returned home from her mission today and the ward had a huge party for her. SHES AWESOME and her testimony SLAYS. we´re already best friends and she has pledged to help us with whatever lessons we need members present YES. and Rennie, my sweet little sister away from home now has my third extra name tag. GAve it to her as a goodbye gift in case I had transfers. Ill try to get a picture with her this week with it on. SHE gleamed wearing it. Future missionary right there.

TUESDAY: Great visits with Hermana Sugel and her kids. THey are so much happier now. FUNNY MOMENT if yall wanna laugh: Bichito ran out of the room during our lesson and just started peeing all over the other room. At first noone really knew what was going on and it was just silent with the sound of ¨water trickling¨hahahahaha then we had a very very long laugh in that moment. An emotional lesson with AUrora and Miguel and we finally quit teaching them. There was one tiny moment where we KNOW the spirit was present in their hearts. THen he rejected it and offered his son for marriage to me again. MAYBE in more time they can accept the gospel in their lives but for now, God´s will says let them be.

WEDNESDAY: BEST. DISTRICT. MEETING. ever. Elder Mendez who (sad face) goes home this transfer gave the BEST lesson on how to teach people and not lessons. BY comparing everyone of us to a character from a Disney Pixar movie. Then we had to teach hear character with all their characteristics in mind. IT was SO gun and actually really REALLY helped. And the characters he chose for each of us was so spot on. Im Jessie... from Toy Story. Hah. Go figure. Picture below of all of us with our characters and we also played White Elephant right after together. AND another thing about our zone, I have becom the best selfie taker here and our zone loveesssss selfies Anytime someone says selfie, WE FLOCK. Picture below. Met with the Romero-Reyes family and they drew pictures of us with their family next to Jesus Christ. Sooo cute. I love them.

THURSDAY: Today we slayedddd the crap out of the area book cleaning it out. Ive never ripped up so many pieces of paper. And we found A TON of new people we can contact and hopefully bring to Christ this Christmas so praying all that works out. Met with a new invstigator Yolanda and we invited her to be baptized because she is sooo ready for the 26th of december. But with tears streaming down her face, she said you couldnt accept because her son (shes like 65) forbids her to get baptized and she wants to respect him because she loves him. She is very poor and can only live with her son so she has no choice at this time. But she gave one of the most powerful testimonies she will keep reading and keep praying in the way she knows is the way of the Lord. Through the Book of Mormon and praying with real intent and a sincere heart. She then gave us all the money she had for that week to pay us for ¨our trouble¨ coming to see her. We cried. Oh how we cried together. That woman has so much faith. PLEASE pray for her that her so will soften his heart.

FRIDAY: just so you are all aware, being a missionary is hard. Living with a companion is HARD. especially when they aren´t necessarily the same personality and have the same plans in mind. And because of this, these last few weeks have been hard on top of all the other stress of the mission. And because of that, I had a panic attack this morning WHICH IS SO NOT NORMAL FOR ME. And at this point I knew I needed to get help. President Stellmon, the ZL´s and the DL´s all helped out whether it was giving me ablessing or actually getting me a psychologist to talk to every Saturday. If any of you really know me, I HATE help. LOL I always want to be able to do things by myself and I´m very independent but the Lord obviously knows I need to learn something about trusting in other people and allowing them to help me. So thats the plan.Prayers are appreciated for me that this can get better Love you guys (: Hermana Sugel who used to be a less active NOW is coming with us to tons of lessons to help teach and is giving us soooo many references so blessinggsss (:

SATURDAY: IT was moving day. Haha we have a ton of extra stuff in our house so we finally for to move it out today with the help of the ZL´s. Talked to my psychologist Sister Packard (AMAZING) and after a lot of talking she is 100% positive with her conclusion that I have maladaptive perfectionism. Lol go figure. Which basically means that I like to be the best at everything right now.And I just got accept patience in my life at this point and change my train of thought A LOT. A thought a lot about what Bishop Whitaker said to me when I was set apart. PATIENCEEE. and I obviously need to apply it. GUYS, LISTEN TO YOUR BISHOPS AND STAKE PRESIDENTS. THEY KNOW WHAT THEYRE TALKING ABOUT. Then met with the Gonzales family (recent converts, super awesome sweet family) and the Baxin Cruz family and we got rid of all the coffee in their house for the Word of Wisdom. They are so much happier than before we found them. You can see the gospel just SHINING through them. THEN we got to attend the culture activity for the dedication of the Tijuana temple. One of the coolest but most random things Ive ever seen. They danced through the decades basically. And when they did swing, they played the cantana from Star Wars. I gasped pretty dang loud there. All the missionaries had a good laugh then. But then they played a tonnn of music like KAnye West, Brother BEar, KAty Perry, and ended with Elijah THomas singing Embark! Weird hearing his voice all the way here. MISS YOU ELIJAH.

SUNDAY: Hermana Salcedo´s birthday! We finally were able to have a great day together with ZERO tension which was a blessing. I just loved her. Cause I kept thinking how would Christ treat her. TOTALLY changed my perspective Thanks Sister Packard. THEN we were able to attend and extension of the dedication of the Tijuana temple, Dieter F Uchtdorf was the dedicator and it was beautiful. I teared up when he asked the children to seal the corner stone of the temple. It was beautiful. He truly is a man of God. Finally also taught Carmen for the first time in forever. I shared a lesson my dad taught me about Christmas lights and how especially in this time of Christmas, we need to SHINE like Christmas lights and light up those around us with our love and our service.3 Nephi 12: 14-16. Just like the band Coldplay sings, (yes, my dad and I love music.)

Those Christmas lights light up the street.

LIght up the fireworks in me.

May all your troubles soon be gone.

Those Christmas lights keep shining on.

I CHALLENGE you all to SHINE your Christmas lights (physically and figuratively) so that others can be touched by your love and service and can feel the true meaning of Christmas. HA NACIDO UN SALVADOR. A Savior is born! HOW AMAZING. Let us rejoice. Let us shine.

Then we went and visited Monica and Alejandrina and all their family and they suprised us with a birthday cake for Hna Salcedo. Super sweet and super sad because we all knew SOMEONE was leaving. And Hermana Salcedo and I couldnt sleep until 12 in the morning when we finally got the call from the DL´s that Hermana Salcedo is out of Atlixco.

TOMORROW I will know at our transfer meeting who my companion is and I will be sure to let you all know what the sitch is. I love you all so much and truly appreciate all the support, emails, and prayers.

HASTA LO OTRA LUNES

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Con mi amor infinito,

Hermana Abigail Creer