Hi family!
Sorry about the craziness of last week and quick email! I will try to
give a better update of the past two weeks! Thanksgiving was great! We got to
have a missionary turkey bowl in the morning and then we got to spend
Thanksgiving with our ward mission leader and his family! Him, his wife, and
son are all allergic to gluten so we had a gluten free Thanksgiving dinner.. It
was actually really good! And it was a wonderful Thanksgiving! We spent most
of the week doing service for less actives, recent converts and a couple PIs!
It was a great week! This last week has been wonderful as well! Darby had her
baptismal interview on Wednesday and it went really well. She finally talked to
her dad and told him she wants to get baptized (this is a REALLY big deal!) and
he told her he wants her to wait until after Christmas break so they can talk
about it in person. This means that she will be getting baptized after
Christmas break and therefore when I'm not in Natchitoches. I was bummed but at
the same time I'm so excited that she finally talked to her dad and he said he
wants to be there when she gets baptized! That's really exciting! Our only
worry now is how bad he is going to push anti material on her while she is
home. She asked us to start teaching her the main lessons again so she can be
prepared for any questions her dad has! Please keep her in your prayers!
Crystal is doing good as well. We still haven't been able to meet with her
group of friends again but she did give us their numbers and we've been trying
to get in contact with them. We were able to finish teaching the restoration
and we taught the Plan of Salvation. It still isn't completely clicking with
her so I've been focusing a lot of my prayers on asking for guidance on what
specifically she needs to hear about the gospel that will make everything
click! Shelby has basically dropped of the planet. Finals begin this week and
she has been stressed with work and finishing up all her assignments for
classes. She's been behind on school work for most of the semester and I think
now it's all starting to catch up with her. She texted us about a week ago
though and told us she hasn't forgotten about us and is excited to get together
after finals! So I'm not too worried!
We had the Christmas Devotional broadcasted at our church building last
night and we had a gumbo cook off before hand and we had three less active
families come! It was awesome! Two of them haven't been inside the church
building for a long time and it was so good to see them there! I loved it! And
the gumbo was delicious :)
This past weekend was the big City of Lights Christmas Festival and
Natchitoches was completely packed with people!! It was crazy!! We got
permission to run in the 5k that morning and that was a lot of fun!
Unfortunately there's the whole site and sound thing with your companion so I
wasn't able to actually race in it. I won't give too many details on our pace
but let's just say I had old ladies power walking faster than I was running. It
was a definite struggle to prevent myself from not taking off in a normal pace!
On Thursday we had our zone training meeting and the sisters that rode with us
had their interviews with President Hansen afterwards so we ended up spending
almost the entire day in Alexandria. We had driven down the night before and
stayed the night and it was so much fun to see mama and papa Green! Plus Sister
Thornely, who I came out with, was there on exchanges so it was really fun. The
library just told us the computer lab is closing right now so I have to go.
Sorry. I love y'all!
Love,
Sister Ogden
