Merry...

...Christmas!!


Christmas in Belen New Mexico is going to be great as a missionary :-) There are probably very few times that are better for sharing the gospel, we get lots of great food (which will not help with how out of shape I am), and I get to Skype with my parents and siblings. It will be fun for Elder Krahenbuhl and I to spend our first Christmas away from home in such great circumstances. Thank you to everyone that has sent me Christmas cards as well!

Roy and Creta were baptized on Saturday and then were confirmed yesterday! I wish you all could have been there, but it was great as it was. We showed up early with the ward mission leader, Brother Boliver, to fill the font and get the chairs set up and were surprised to find a musical production going on in the room. Turns out there was a scheduling conflict and they would finish right as the baptism was supposed to start. We were really stressed out but decided to just move the baptism talks into another room and then get up and move rooms for the actual ordinance. We were really blessed and everything came together perfectly for a beautiful baptism. Both Creta and Roy were happy and excited and despite their many physical problems they comfortably were submerged into the water without any problems. I wish pictures could convey how happy all of us were. And what added to it was that just a couple days before the baptism we had given Roy a priesthood blessing and healed him of his dreams caused by PTSD. Now we get to spend Christmas Eve with them :-)

One more fun thing to share before I sign off for today. It is a big focus in our mission, and I am pretty sure in every mission, to become better teachers. They have pointed out that most of us know the doctrine well but are not able to share it effectively. As they traveled the missions world wide they said that most missionaries rank a 2 (on a scale of 1-6) when it comes to teaching ability. They produced some amazing videos and study materials to train us and help us improve as a result. The videos are supposed to be used in each district meeting, but not to much outside of that. President Miller has felt inspired and received guidence to see what would happen if missionaries were exposed to the videos more often, and my district has been selected to be the first to test it out. We now each have a TV/DVD player in our apartment with the videos running every minute that we are home, and in 2-3 weeks he will see how much we have improved as teachers. From the sounds of it we are expected to become the best teachers in the mission. I will let you all know how it goes and what I learn. I am confident that his promise is inspired and feel very blessed to have such an amazing opportunity!

I love you all and am enjoying my mission completely,

Elder Inman