Merry Christmas from Me to Y'all

Hello everyone! We just got back from a pretty successful zone activity. It was very simple; we just kind of ate pizza and chicken together, but it was great to get the zone together. We were also able to present a tool we created to help them get more member referrals. It's like a little worksheet where members can write names of friends they can invite to hear the gospel, methods they can use, and a place to write a goal of when they're going to do it. I was really excited for it, because 1) It took me a long time to write it all out in Chinese and 2) The idea came like a blast of revelation when I was studying really hard in Preach My Gospel for a way to help our area and the whole zone find more solid new investigators. So I was pleased that it worked out so well.

This week is going to go so fast, I can tell. This Thursday is the ultra-secret Christmas devotional, and all I know about it is that I have to be at the Tainan train station at 4:30 in the morning. Should be a lot of fun.

This week was fun, but also kind of stressful. One kind of fun thing we did was we went with a member to go caroling to some old people. The unfortunate part was that we didn't have time to really teach them much, and none of them lived in our own area. But it was a good opportunity to do some service. One of the old ladies was super happy to have us over, she was laughing and swaying along while we were singing. We said happy Christmas (i.e. Merry Christmas, but in Chinese you say happy Christmas) and she said "Yeah! Happy, happy, everybody's happy!" It was cute. We also had a pretty successful leadership training meeting. I was worried about our presentation, but after a lot of study and prayer we put together a presentation that went pretty well. Our topic was on helping investigators receive revelation through prayer, and we focused our training on helping people have a desire to pray about the Book of Mormon. It turned out pretty well, thanks to the Spirit.

Our investigators are having some troubles right now, actually. I mean, investigators always have problems, but we're trying really hard not to let them drop out. One kid is scared of his family even though he's never actually told them he wants to get baptized. Another guy who quit using drugs so he could get baptized started smoking. I feel confident we can help these and other people get baptized, but I'm really sweating over helping everyone in the zone baptize. I've got to lead by example, but I still don't feel like I'm good enough to do so. Oh well. Luckily we can have faith in Christ instead of faith in ourselves.

I'm sorry this week's letter is kind of short. We're a little short on time today. I hope you have a Merry Christmas.

Love,
Carter