As Always, Perseverance Paid Off

Family.
I'm so happy I got to see you on Friday! I might be coming home in 5 weeks, but it was still so fun to get to talk to you from the mission field one last time. I hope all your Christmases were good. Christmas in the mission is super fun, but really stressful as far as the work goes. The goals remain the same even though we had 3 half-days of work. Fun fact for ya: "home for Christmas" doesn't exist in Mexico. It's vacation time, and everyone leaves! I've never seen the streets so deserted! That, plus the many investigators and recent converts and members who randomly left made for a few frustrating days. But, as always, perseverance paid off and we were shown some miracles. After a fairly disappointing sacrament meeting showing, we left to look for the people who didn't come to see if they could make it to the 12 o clock ward. We didn't have any luck until we were walking away from Maria Fernanda's house and we heard a quiet voice say "do you have a pamphlet?" We turned around and this little old lady was standing about 10 steps behind us. .She repeated herself and of course we sprung into action introducing ourselves and inviting her to the 12 o clock church. She was like, idk I have to wait for my nephew slash I' a little busy and we're like HE CAN COME TOO and in that moment I flagged down a taxi, we waited for her 50-year-old nephew, and the four of us went to the Elder's ward (where the Elders made us sing a spur-of-the-moment musical number in Sacrament meeting). Anyway, the lady's name is Carmen and her nephew is Jesus and she asked us for a Book of Mormon after the meeting. I don't know if I mentioned that this is pretty much the same thing that happened with Reina last week? Anyway, despite the relatively slow week we actually do have a great investigator pool going! I don't know if I talked about Jazmin, but she came to church for the first time yesterday and loved it and is getting baptized the 24th, aka a week before I finish my mission... can't remember if I talked about Rosaura either, but she's a mom of 3 and is awesome and agreed to get baptized and her daughter Dulce is also interested. Reina and her daughter Danaris are golden but Reina's sister-in-law who lived with them randomly died on Saturday and they've obviously been unavailable since then. Maria Fernanda is supposed to get baptized this Sunday, but her aunt is stil not allowing it. But Marfer is so cute and was telling us all about how she prayed and got her answer about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon... did I already tell you about that too? Anywho, she prayed and book fell open to a scripture that really touched her heart. That's the gist of it :) Please please pray that the heart of her aunt Blanca will be softened so her niece can get baptized on the 3rd!
We had a fun zone conference this week, and then a zone activity. The zone activity was way funny because the zone leaders didn't go to get the food early enough and we ended up not eating, and one of the hermana's locked an elder's shoe in the sacrament closet so trying to open that took us about 2 hours. But it was fun and I taught the Latinas how to play 4 Square, and it was funny because I started getting all competitive but no one else did... haha but it was one of my favorite Christmases of my life, I can say that truly. Thank you all for your Christmas wishes and for supporting me so much in the last year. Christ lives, He saved us from death. I love you guys.
Beeeeeeg keeeeeees Leeeeeeetle keeeeees
Hermana LeSueur

Emma's companion, Sis Dagua, from Columbia