CHRISTMAS

Feliz Navidad!

This was a great week because it was CHRISTMAS!!!! I got the best Christmas present of all, to Skype with my family! It was so awesome to get to talk to them. It's hard being away from family at Christmas, but it's great to be a missionary at Christmas time! What better way to celebrate the birth of our Savior than by getting to talk about Him with everyone I see!

skyping with the fam!

We had a great week! Everyone was busy, so it was hard to teach lessons, but we got to be with some awesome members for Christmas Eve and for Christmas! We also had Christmas Conference! The whole mission got together. We had lunch and watched a movie about Christ's birth. We read Luke 2 and President Mortensen talked to us about how we need to be like the shepherds. It was a great day! Hermana Kiser and I, along with three elders in our zone, sang The First Noel/ La Primera Navidad and it went pretty well. 

There is a slideshow on the mission blog at: CLICK HERE

We had a goal as a mission to have 600 convert baptisms this year, which is really high for our mission. We are going to end the year around 550 baptisms (which is still the second highest in the history of the mission.) We came to Christmas Conference a little sad that we hadn't met our goal. President talked to us about the story of Nephi in the Book of Mormon. Nephi thinks he has failed when he goes back to Jerusalem to get the plates. He tries offering his family's wealth to Laban, but Laban takes it and does not give him the plates. He does not obtain the plates in the way he thought he would, he gets the plates because he comes back to find Laban drunk and is able to kill him and put on his clothing. President pointed out to us that Laban was probably drunk because he was celebrating his new wealth. So far this year, 260 of those new converts have taken family names to the temple to perform proxy baptisms. On average each has taken 2.33 names. The new converts did 606 baptisms. 606 people on the other side of the veil have had the opportunity to accept those baptisms. President talked to us about how the work we do here leads to work we cannot see. Those new converts will share the restored gospel with their friends, they will raise their kids in the gospel, they will go on missions, and they will continue to go to the temple. The work will keep moving forward!

Christmas and Christmas Eve were great! We visited a lot of people who all gave us tamales! We had a combined sacrament meeting with both the English and Spanish wards, so that was interesting. It was mostly done in Spanish and there was a translator. People just sang the hymns in whatever language they wanted to.


I love you all and hope you had a merry Christmas and a happy new year! (I get to start off the new year by speaking in both the English and Spanish sacrament meetings)

Love,


Hermana Bettridge

Lots of pics this week!

1. My two companions from the mission, who were companions before I got here! (I got to see all my friends at Christmas Conference!)
2. Hermana Kiser and my friends from College Station!
3. Hermana Kiser and I! (Note the matching shoes!)
4. Hermana Sheirbon and I!
5. My old district! (I miss them a lot!)
6. How we really act!
7. Hermana Taylor, my MTC companion
8. Hna Andreasen, one of my MTC district friends!
9. Hermana Kiser and I found a cool house that made a dragon out of lights
10. The missionaries that meet in my building all jumping after church on Sunday because we got to skype our families!
11. The Sanchez family! One of my favorite families here! They invited us over on Christmas for brunch after church.