Thank you all for your letters and words of encouragement. They always help me feel uplifted and your love and my Heavenly Father and my Savior's love for me and you and all of our Heavenly Father's children. Thank you all also for your messages of Happy Birthday. It is humbling to think that you were all thinking about me and were willing to do so much to express your love. I have appreciated all the cards that I have received. Many of them I will be picking up tomorrow at transfers because they were holding all of the packages in case we got transferred and they were accidentally sent to the wrong address. Also, can you please tell the Stoutenbergs thank you for their card for me or send me their e-mail so I can write them a thank-you note. Yes, it is true. Training has come to an end and Elder Swainston is getting transferred. This was also his first area and he has been here for 6 months. He says that he is excited to be going somewhere new but will really miss the people he has grown to love here. I am excited to get a new companion tomorrow but am also sad to see him go. We will all miss him and wish him the best on the rest of his mission and life. We have had an incredible week this week. We were fed exuberantly and even had 3 different meal appointments on Thanksgiving. Needless to say we were stuffed that day. We are getting fed again tonight by some investigators, the Johnson's. They are some awesome people. He is the one who professionally plays Santa Clause and this weekend is the first time he will be in the square so I will have to get some pictures with him. We studied a talk that I really like from Elder Holland titled "The First Great Commandment" that Elder Swainston and I discussed and felt like we should share it with them. It is an incredible talk that has taught me a lot about what our Savior expects of us and the blessings that are in store if we follow Him. We were watching yesterday Elder Holland's talk from last April's Conference and they are both really connected so I would encourage you all to take a look at them and apply what you learn. We had an incredible experience this week, that I feel was an answer to all of our prayers. Elder Swainston and I were walking to a potential investigator's home when Elder Swainston received the impression to go knock on a door. We did so and a man answered. He began talking to us and we had an incredible discussion about the Restoration. He told us how he had been earnestly seeking for increased knowledge and understanding of the truth and was so excited as we bore testimony to him of Jesus Christ and of His restored gospel and then gave him a Book of Mormon to which he committed to read. Then, yesterday we visited him again and had another incredible experience. It had been a challenging couple of days for me but when we went to talk to him again he began to explain to us that he had prayed 2 weeks before that he would receive increased light and understanding after becoming somewhat discouraged. He said that he knew that the Lord had sent us that day in answer to his prayer on a day that had been particularly difficult for him. He talked about feeling the Spirit and the feeling of joy, peace, and excitement as we talked about the restoration with him. It was a miraculous and humbling experience to see how the Lord strengthened and answered not only his prayers but ours and also your prayers for us as well and that He is perfectly aware of all our needs and desires. Finally, my birthday was awesome and it was amazing to receive that miraculous experience that day. Everyone wished me a happy birthday at church (the youth even sang) and the Villamors treated us to an awesome dinner. I love you all and wish you all the best this week and Christmas season. The weather is getting fairly cold here but it is still decent during the day. Incredible experiences await us all and I will pray that you all will have great experiences serving and sharing the gospel. I will send pictures in my drive of a method we received training on over how to give away the Book of Mormon that might help in y'alls efforts. Anyway, thank you all for your support, prayers, and love. They mean a lot and I pray for all of you. Merry Christmas!
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