This past week was super fun! It was crazy as usual!
We had our first DCM this transfer! The discussion was awesome. We went around the circle and read our favorite scripture about Jesus. Some of my favorites that were shared are: D&C 84:88 - Christ suffered for all of our sins. His angels will be around us to bear us up. 1 Nephi 21:15-16 - We are engraven upon the palms of Jesus's hands. We He sees His hands He remembers us, He knows us, and He will never forget us. John 14:18 - I WILL COME TO YOU. Jesus will not leave us comfortless or orphans. The Spirit was really strong as we did this. My testimony of what Christ did for me grew. After DCM we had a Christmas party. We all went and picked up lunch and ate together. Then we all ate the dessert that we brought. We had tres leches, peach cobbler, oreos, cookies, and more. The table looked like diabetes, but we still ate it as we jammed out to Christmas music.😎
It rained all day on Christmas Eve, so it felt .members gave Hermana Berry a purse and me a dress! We each got a $25 gift card to Chick-Fil-A, so we are going to put that to use. Honestly, the members are so good to us here. I didn't think that I was going to get anything. Hermana Berry and I had lunch with the STLs. We had a picnic, and then we played at the park. For dinner we went over to Maria, Vladimir, and Roger's house. They made traditional Venezuelan Christmas food. We ate Ayaka, pan de jamón, pork with spices and chocolate cake. It was really good. I felt like I was going to explode because I ate so much😂.
Christmas was super fun! Hermana Berry and I opened presents in the morning after we woke up. I got a fluffy sherpa throw that I absolutely love, a nativity set, socks, candy, and more. But… presents aren’t the important thing, Jesus Christ’s birth is. We had a mission-wide zoom call at 9am. President Monson told us the story of Christ’s birth. We read scriptures from Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2. It was really cool because President Monson went into some historical details that I had never thought about. He told us some symbolic things that blew Hermana Berry’s mind. After that, we went Christmas caroling with some of the elders. We sang at a couple of houses, and then ate lunch at one of the people that the zone leaders are going to start teaching. For Christmas dinner, we went to Johnny and Sandra’s house. They made rice, pescada perdida, and cut up an avocado. Pescada Perdida means lost fish.😂 It was really funny as they were explaining the name to us. It was soo good. The fish had plantenes with it, I thought they were potatoes😂. I hope we get to eat more of them because I actually like them.
Osman and lesson: Hermana Berry and I taught Osman again this week about the Plan of Salvation. He really wants to be baptized because he has never been baptized before. He also really likes and agrees with the things that we are teaching him. We are going to put him on date. I am starting to contribute more to the lessons in Spanish. Sometimes Hermana Berry looks at me and then throws me under the bus. She asked me to bear my testimony in this lesson. I had no time to plan what I was going to say😂. So I just bore my testimony. It was super scary and I am pretty sure most of what I said wasn’t grammatically correct. I just went with it, and I bore my testimony about families being forever. Hermana Berry said that she could hear me getting choked up. She said that the Spirit was really strong. I almost started to cry, it was really cool now that I think about it. Even though my Spanish is really bad, that isn’t what matters because having the Spirit is the important thing. I just hope that the Spirit got across my testimony.
Hermana Berry and I taught them the Plan of Salvation. Instead of us teaching them, we had them teach us. It is a tactic that works really well to gage the amount of information that people remember. We were able to bring things back to their remembrance and answer some questions that they had. They really want to get to the temple to be sealed as a family, it is super cute! We are hopefully going to start teaching their uncle, so we can teach them both.
