Gatlinburg Fires

Hey ya'll!

This week has been a lot of fun, and from the looks of it, it's not going to slow down with that any time soon.

We started our week off at the Harris' for Family Home Evening.  It was a lot of fun.  A lot of members showed up, and we ate lots of food and talked a lot and felt the spirit, which are basically my three favorite things to do, so it was awesome!  We even got to show them how they can #lighttheworld  ;)

On Thursday we went with Sister Long over to the family history center.  She invited us, and we'd heard that was a way we could do some finding and other things, but neither of us had done it before, so we didn't know what to expect, so we just kinda went with it, and it was pretty cool.  I mean, we didn't do any real finding while we were there like we were hoping, but we did find people who's ordinances need to be done, which is basically the same thing!  The only problem with the guy I found is that like five different records say he's married to different people, and has different birth dates, so now I'm frustrated because this man might not even be who the records say he is, and he's got to be sealed to the right person and GAH!!!.... Family history probs....  But I'm determined to sort this out....  I might have to wait a little bit until after my mission to really look into it, but it's gonna happen.  And rumor has it, Emily might be coming with us this week to look at her family history!

Friday was a pretty fun day!  We had our ward Christmas party put on by the lovely Brother and Sister Harris.  It was really nice.  It was the start of things feeling like Christmas, which was just so good! It was just nice seeing everyone gather around to enjoy everyone's company.  And then some previously selected people came up and told stories about some of their favorite Christmas stories.  Brother Bundy's was pretty great.  He told a story about the time he made a perfect snowball that hit his wife dead center in her back.  She of course had her revenge.... Haha!

On Saturday we saw Emily.  She's so great! I feel like I don't talk about her enough in my emails, but we see her all the time, and she's really progressing!  Lessons with her are different from any other investigator I've taught, but it's how she needs them.

The next day we went over to the church for a baptism of a little boy in our ward, and then to watch the Christmas devotional.  While we were watching, Emily texted us saying she wants to get baptized!  It was so crazy!  The only thing is she's scared of what her family will think, so nothing is set in stone, yet, but it just made our week! Then, all of the elders in our district showed up a little later, and we freaked out to them.  And we all sat around a little iPad and watched the Christmas devotional together.  It was the perfect ending to a perfect week. :)

Sincerely,
Sister Shelton

Elder Wimmer, Elder Dewsnup, Sister Griffiths and me, all partying with Santa at the Christmas party!

We showed up for district meeting, and the church was packed with people making hygiene kits for the people in the Gatlinburg fires. It's weird because this is the first place I've been to that's burned down. I didn't see the fires, but we've been getting the smoke. It's really sad about all of the people who lost their homes. Please pray for them.