Merry Christmas Y'all! And a Blessed New Year

Sister Brown and I in our Chrirstmas Pj's my mom got us
Hello! I hope everyone had a magical Christmas! Christmas In Louisiana was so much more fun than I thought it'd be. 

I finally broke out of the MTC and away from the sorta okay food, and made it to Louisiana! Me, and the four others from my district in the MTC made it to the mission president's home and had the best dinner ever, and then he told us who our companions would be and where we would be going. My companion is Sister Brown, and we are serving in Natchitoches! Or Nack-i-dish, if you want to know how to pronounce it. It's three and a half hours away from Baton Rouge, and in the middle of nowhere pretty much. On that three and a half hour drive I saw a dead alligator so I knew that I was going to love it here. It's like Ephraim Utah, but a little bit bigger. But it's so pretty up here! There is a finger lake that runs through it and it's known for its Christmas lights that line the river front. It's like if the Thanksgiving Point lights were along a river bank. It's so quaint.

Something not as quaint is that we are staying in a one bedroom apartment with the two other sisters in our area, so we are very cramped and I've been living out of a suitcase for almost a month. Speaking of which, I've been out almost one month! We made it one month mom!

Since Sister Brown and I are both new to the area, we have just been knocking a lot of doors. Which isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Except for the other day. We went up to these two guys sitting on the back of a truck in a neighborhood we were tracting and we starting talking about Light the World with them and how some of the scriptures on the videos are from the Book of Mormon. So we asked him, "do you know what the Book of Mormon is?" and he said "Yeah." Only, I wasn't expecting him to say that, because no one else had. So I start telling him about what it is, and that it's just another testament of Jesus, and he goes, "yeah, I know." and so at this point I'm practically panicking because we never practiced what to do if they knew what the BOM was so I said, "It's just a book, that we believe in as people" and then stopped talking, turned to my poor companion, and she finished the rest of the short conversation with this man, who surprisingly, wasn't interested in the book that we believe in as people. 

Saturday night by the lights, they do fireworks, so we spent our dinner break down there watching the Christmas fireworks, which was awesome. We got invited to dinner at a nonmembers house out in the woods last night and they had the good fireworks right in their backyard. (mom close your eyes for this part,) we stood right underneath them, and almost got our faces burned. It was epic. Every Christmas should have fireworks.

Christmas Eve was awesome. I spoke in Church, which was fine, because there are maybe 100 active members in the ward, and only half of them showed up, and the other half of those people were kids. I didn't say "crap," so I felt pretty good about it. 

Christmas day was great! I got to open all my awesome presents with my cool roomies, and I got a lot of amazing things, thank you so much to everyone that sent something. I loved it all. And then we all got dressed in our cute new clothes and went to Skype our mommas! Sister Brown and I went to the bishops house, and then we made a plate of food to take home. Then we went to a member's house, and had more food. Chicken and dumplin's is my favorite dish here. And then we went to see the stake president and they gave us dessert, and then we went to another members house and had food there. And they all gave us food to take home, so don't worry mom, i'm eating just fine.

Natchitoches is pretty amazing and I love it here so much, I really don't ever want to leave. Please pray that I will be blessed with the gift of tongues, because I'm struggling and it's not pretty. I'm so excited to start the work and get to know more of the people here. I am so grateful that we had a day to remember our Savior and his life. I hope you all felt the happiness that Christmas brings and I hope you all strive to have that feeling with you into the New Year. Be safe everyone! enjoy the snow! I love you all!

In the Atlanta Airport on the way to the mish
Baton Rouge temple that i won't be able to go inside until I come back after I get off my mission lol



Our Christmas decorations

Smoothie king is a thing here and I am one happy sister

The drive to Natchitoches looked like this the whole way up.

The prettiest tree outside of Northwestern University
Some of the Christmas lights

Me and sis. brown at the lights

​​Me, feat. my knee brace, in the church parking lot

Sister brown posing when we got lost on an eight mile loop to a members house

Sister beck (one of my roomies) and sister brown, because it's freezing out here

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's The End of The World As We Know It

Image
We went to the American Cemetery  to look for some of my ancestors Hey y'all! I'm just here, in the greatest state in the US surviving flash floods, and tornadoes. Hope y'all are having fun with the snow! We woke up Wednesday morning to the sound of tornado warning sirens, Shortly after getting our 72 hour kits and other necessities in the car, we got a call from president Varner to drive to the Alexandria Stake center and stay there until it passed. so we get on the road for an hour ish, long drive there, and the wind and rain was so bad we could barely see, so we were driving pretty slow. Shortly after that, everything clears up, it stopped raining, but the wind was still really bad. As we are starting to speed up a little bit, we see it. The biggest Cyclone I've ever seen. bigger than the one on The Wizard of Oz for sure. So we speed up, and we're all freaking out as it gets closer and closer to our car, we're all screaming individual prayers for ...
Read more

70 and sunny

Image
My three favorite things ever, Church, Emiri, and Sister Brown Hey y'all, its me, Sister Rogel, from the Loosiana Baton Rouge Mission. There were't any tornadoes this week so I can't freak y'all out about anything, but it was pretty funny to hear about how y'all thought it was real! I got a kick out of that!  Not a lot happened this week, I went on exchanges pretty much the whole week. Sister Brown is a Sister Training Leader (STL) so she goes around to all the sisters in our zone, to visit with them and see how they are doing. Since we work in companionships, and I am still a greenie (New Missionary), Sister Brown's STL companion is sister Trussell who is working in Leesivlle. So once a week, or in this case, twice a week, we all switch companions, and I go to Leesville to be with Sister Trussell's companion, Sister Manyard! I love her so much and have learned so much from her! So my week went a little like this: Monday was Pday and we jus...
Read more

Drinking From a Fire Hose

Image
HELLO OUTSIDE WORLD It has been a crazy few days here at the MTC, and it's crazy that it's only been a few days. Feels like I've been here a week. My district and I have decided that this is what we imagine spirit prison to feel like. So please, got to the temple and do some work! My companion is Sister Peck! She's from Texas, going to serve in Logan Utah and has one of the strongest testimonies I've heard. She is super outgoing, and always makes sure that we sit next to new Elders or sisters every meal. So I'm making friends fast. We both have a goal to do some form of exercise every day, but we both hate running so I know that God put us together for a reason. there are 8 people in my district including me, four elders, four sisters. for everyone wondering, Elder Jones is in my district and he was just made District Leader last night. Sister Peck and I are the only two in the branch without callings, which is nice because I'm stressed out enou...
Read more