Dear Family,
Happy Thanksgiving again. It was a most excellent holiday this year. We had a blast. Our Preparation day was changed to Thursday and so our Zone Leaders organized a Turkey bowl! It was awesome. So the whole zone was there and we played some football and soccer (the real football). It was a blast! Fortunately, I did not break my foot :) But it was a really good work out and the next two days Elder Shrestha and I woke up SUPER sore. It hurt. But it was still worth it. Elder Shrestha was hilarious playing American Football because he had no idea what was going on or how to play so he just ran around like a chicken with his head cut off letting people push him around. Ha ha. It was so funny. He did a lot better when we pulled out the soccer ball. Just like a true Asian!
After the games we went to a family in the ward for Elder Shrestha's first Thanksgiving dinner. And it was delicious! We had all of the classic foods. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and most importantly pie! It was great. Fortunately, none of the Nepali care about American holidays at all and so when 6 o'clock hit and it was time to go back to work, none of the Nepali cared at all that we were visiting their home. They thought it was just a normal day. Ha ha.
So thanksgiving was successful again! I love that holiday. And it sounds like it was successful for you guys too! I'm really glad that Aiko got to come over for the holiday. I hope she had a good time! And that service project you did is going to be amazing! These people really need it. It will be wonderful to give those gifts out for Christmas. Thank you all SOOOOOO much! Sister Baxter told me she got 5 boxes of supplies. That is amazing! Thanks again.
We got our first decent snow fall this week. Thanksgiving morning was amazing for weather. It was over 50 degrees. But when evening came the weather randomly dropped over 20 degrees and started snowing. Serving in this area has been full of firsts and it is so fun. This was Elder Shrestha's first snow fall! I don't think he was that excited though because he didn't realize that snow also means cold. He is doing good though. I've been impressed by how quickly he has adapted to the cold.
We had the coolest event this week! There is a family in the ward that has friends in another ward that are Indian and they are solid members of the church. So this family in the ward hosted their Indian friends and we also brought an army of Nepali people. We brought almost 20 Nepali people. And we had a really nice time having dinner with all sorts of excellent Indian/Nepali foods and mingling with each other. Afterwards this Indian couple gave a little devotional connecting the festival of lights that we had a few weeks ago to the light of christ. It was a really nice thing and all of the Nepali people had a great time. It was a good way to help some of these people see that you don't have to be Hindu forever.
This work is so weird! We have soooooo many people that we teach. Some are more regular than others. But for so many of them, baptism seems like it is eons away. They are all interested in the gospel but the hard part is helping them to experience conversion. And getting these people to commit to anything is really hard. We had another army of 12 people come to church. So clearly people are interested but I am still unsure what the next step is to helping these people move from interested to converted. Any thoughts? It's going to be a long process I think.
I'm excited for Christmas time! We have a lot of super great activities ahead. I am worried that the time is going to go too fast.
Have a wonderful week!
Love,
Elder Ruesch
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