Sister Elizabeth Ashley Smith: Day 360 Othello, Wa. HAPPY CHRISTMAS HARRY!!

Oh my. I can't even believe it's almost Christmas!! Time has flown SO fast. I'm so pumped to talk to you guys!! :)

Life is going SO good right now. I'm serving with Hermana Gifford from Logan, Utah. She was originally from the Spokane mission. She is super bubbly and happy and a fantastic missionary...and she looks EXACTLY like Amanda when she wears her glasses!!! Like it's creepy. You'll see in the pics. Anywho, she is teaching me Spanish!! Othello is like 70% Hispanic so there are plenty of opportunities for us to practice. I'm so excited to be learning it! :)

I am already completely in love with Othello. It is the puniest little town, and everyone is SO nice! We don't have a car, so we are definitely walking everywhere. Yes, it's cold. And I'm trying not to kill myself on all this slickery ice. hahaha :) We are covering the 2nd and 3rd wards and they are just on fire! They have given us a TON of referrals and people to see. Like we're almost overwhelmed with how many people we have to contact. It's awesome. :) There is so much work going on right now. For instance....we got into Othello at like 8 wednesday night and went straight to an appointment with this 10 yr old named Leila and her parents Jessica and Alfonso. Jessica and Leila have been going to the ward for a year but haven't been baptized. Jessica said just the week before, Leila had said she had wanted to be baptized...and she wanted it done before Jan 2nd. So 10 minutes into our time in Othello, we set Leila's baptism date for Dec 28!! This Saturday! Woooooo! Super stoked. We are going to continue teaching Jessica and Alfonso, as well as Alfonso's mother! She broke her leg and got a priesthood blessing and said that it made her feel SO good...and she feels that way every time we come over. So she agreed to take the lessons. :)

Saturday morning we helped deliver food/toy baskets as part of a community service project run by the fire department. You drive in and they load up your car with boxes and give you the address and you go deliver them! So we met this Mixteco family (Mixteco is like old native indian spanish...so cool. The Elders in our district speak it.) and they seriously had NOTHING. They lived in this add-on to a trailer, no doors, no heat, nothin. We gave them their food and toys and stuffs, and left. Right as we pulled out of the driveway, we remembered we had an extra box since the first family we went to didn't want/need theirs. So we decided to go back and give it to the Mixteco family. It couldn't have been more than 3 minutes, but when we knocked on the door, the whole family had unpacked and were examining everything. The little kids were freaking out over the toys and they were so stoked. We told them we had more for them, and they were SO happy. The mom just looked at us and whispered "gracias"....those eyes were the most grateful eyes I've ever seen. I hope never to forget that image. It was so cool to be part of that experience. Now THAT'S Christmas. :)

That night we went with the Elders in our district to go sing at an old folk's home...it was a blast!! It was just us 5 and we sang Christmas songs in both English and Spanish, played piano, an Elder played classical guitar, etc. It was so much fun.

Oh we spoke in 2nd ward on Sunday...which just happens to be Elder Risenmay's home ward. (The area 70) and he just happened to be there. NO PRESSURE. We talked about how our gift to the Savior this Christmas can be sharing the gospel with others and stuffs. It went pretty well. Afterwards he came rushing up to us and shook our hands and told us we did an awesome job, asked where we were from, etc. Nbd.