Christmas!!

 (Sister Putnam)

 

Hello, all! It's been so long without preparation day so I have a TON to write about!!

Monday: Preparation Day!

We did typical preparation day activities, laundry, I called the fam, we went to WinCo & got stuff we needed, and we ran into other missionaries there & because that day's light the world challenge was to get together with people & sing Christmas carols we met up in the parking lot afterwards  sang Christmas carols together. It was pretty fun. I called my family several times that day too, & that was super fun :)

Tuesday: Jedi Masters

Tuesday we did Facebook contacting & roleplayed a lesson with a recent convert in the ward & then we went to the mission office to get my MSF card. Why didn't I have my MSF card in the first place? Well, my first missionary package that was supposed to have my MSF card got lost in the mail, so we had the MTC order a new one. The lost package finally showed up the day before I flew out to Washington, & I never got the first one. Well, because they sent a new package, the card in the first package, that I actually received, was cancelled, so they had to order a whole new card & wait for it to show up. Well, we went to the mission office to get my card & the man in charge of getting it to me said, "Oops I gave it to the Elders in your ward since I knew you'd be seeing them soon lol" So we were like "lol ok" so we went over to the Elders apartment & got the card so I could finally get the food we needed. I taught Sister Madsen how to hand sew, so that was pretty cool, and we decided we also wanted to take up hand embroidery since we're not super busy cause we don't have many investigators. Then we went to the store to actually use my card & ran into some elders there & kinda did the spiderman pointing at spiderman meme lol. But we got food for the next three weeks cause we'd be going without a p-day for 11 days & the next two p-days would be on Christmas & New Years Day when everything is closed. Then we came home & did Facebook contacting & then got on the district call. On the District call something came up about Star wars and if Star Wars is like Missionary work, then what makes missionaries Jedi Masters. I don't remember what was decided, but it was entertaining to listen to.

Wednesday: Christmas Dinner?!?!?!

We had Institute, & several people had questions & we got way off topic but it was pretty good. During personal study we got a text on the district group chat: "oh by the way, President Auna will be coming to our district council today" So we were super nervous because it was President and we weren't doing anything wrong but what if we were doing something wrong and we didn't know and so yeah that was great lol. We had district council and my MTC companion, Sister Israelsen, is actually being trained by Sister Barker in my district so we were able to see each other in person finally! It was awesome, and I'm so glad I get to have her in my district! There was also a strong emphasis on using dignified language and not using slang so that was interesting. So interesting I made a meme about it :) We gave a lesson to this one guy in our ward & he's a really smart guy and so he actually taught us more than we taught him, so that was really cool! We visited a couple in the ward who is super generous and, last time we visited, they wouldn't stop trying to get us to let them make us Christmas dinner, & this time they actually convinced us to let them do that, so that's super exciting! Sister Madsen & I also bought stuff to start embroidery so that was really awesome!

Thursday: Factoids & other nerdy things

Thursday, we did a bit of embroidery stuff, I finished hand embroidering the Angel Moroni onto a mask, so I'll try to send a picture of that!  We also talked to some people on Facebook who we've found through a mentorship group where I offered to mentor people who wanted to become closer to God. Then we did service at a food bank, filling boxes to give to people who needed food, & we taught the a family in the ward a lesson about baptism. The wife is a member, but the husband, Daniel, isn't a member, & we're hoping he'll see the importance of baptism & see why we need it. Then we went out & did heart attacks & that was fun! On the district call there was conversation of interesting "factoids" like how Rowan Atikison, the actor for Mr. Bean, also Johnny English, also the voice of Zazu in the cartoon Lion King got his degree, not in acting, but in electrical engineering & was able to make all the things in the movies he was in that involved engineering actually plausible & not hurt the brains of every engineer watching the movie, & how the word factoid actually means fake facts.

Friday: Christmas Attacks

We had the mission devotional, & that was cool. During personal study on Friday & was reading 1 Nephi 18 when Nephi is tied up on the ship, & not even Nephi's wife or children's pleas could soften Laman & Lemuel's hearts. It hadn't occurred to me until now that Nephi's wife & kids, & Laman, Lemuel, & Sam's wives & kids were watching all of this go down. Looking from each of those points of view was interesting & eye opening. Nephi's wife was watching her brothers in law tie up & threaten to kill her husband! Terrifying brothers-in-law! And Laman & Lemuel's wives were watching their husbands tie up & threaten to kill their brother-in-law. They were scary husbands too! Nephi's kids were watching their uncles tie up their dad. Such scary uncles! Laman & Lemuel's kids were watching their dad & uncle tie up their own brother, & from the kids' points of view, if their fathers were willing to tie up & threaten to kill their own brother, they probably would be willing to do the same to their children if irritated enough. Laman & Lemuel's children were probably terrified of their fathers & uncles! Thinking about this made me so grateful that my parents get along with their siblings, & for the relationships I have with my own brother & sister.    We did some embroidery & then we wanted to Heart Attack the other missionaries in the hotel, but there are Elders in our hotel, so heart attacking (aka putting hearts all over their door) is a no-no when it goes from sisters to elders or vice versa, so, we went to the dollar store & got some small Christmas decorations & instead of heart attacking everyone's door, we Christmas Attacked their doors. Then, we had dinner with the Harbour Pointe sisters & then we came home & began planning a lesson since we were in charge of Come, Follow Me this week, & then we got on a Social Media Meeting with our zone (I think, or it was our district idk) & there we got ideas for finding friends on Facebook to teach the gospel too.

Saturday: Does anyone even do normal renditions of The 12 Days of Christmas anymore??

We went to the bishops storehouse, & did service there, filling orders, etc. It was super busy! We did more embroidery & we had the ward Christmas party over zoom & it honestly was way better than I expected it to be! It was like a Christmas talent show & that was awesome! We have some talented people in this ward! Afterwards we had the Sisters over to make Oreo balls (they're like cake pops but Oreos) that we were gonna take to all the companionships in the district.

One thing we do out here that I might not have mentioned before is, after curfew, we send a "safe" text. Usually, the District Leader sends a text to the District group chat that says "like this message if you're safe" & every companionship likes it if they're safe so then the district leader can report to the Zone leaders that everyone's safe. Well, our district leader has gotten creative with the safe texts lately, & that night for the safe, he started the 12 days of Christmas with "12 safe missionaries" & we would put the next line to the song if we were safe. Well the result was golden! Next, was "11 days without p-day," "10 African friends found on Facebook" "9 check your speeds" "8 miles of biking" "a 6pm ended Christmas" (curfew is at 6pm on holidays) "5 hours online" "4 books of scriptures" "3 companionships driven" (only one set of elders has a car & so they drive the other elders to really far places)" "2 missionaries" and "1 district of BFFs"

Honestly that was awesome, & I honestly don't think anyone ever performs a normal 12 days of Christmas anymore, I’ve heard mostly parodies.

Sunday: Christmas Church

Church was Christmas themed, & we heard some beautiful musical numbers from people in our ward. We had come follow me, & Sister Madsen & I taught about Spiritual gifts & it went really well! We dropped off Oreo balls to everyone except one companionship in the district, because of curfew, so that was fun.

Monday: Matching PJs!!

We dropped off the last plate of Oreo balls to the elders we missed last night because of curfew, but we saw a cute puppy so that's a plus! We picked up Sisters Israelsen & Barker from the car dealership since they were having car problems & then took sister barker to her doctor appointment. Then their car was fixed by the time sister barker finished her appointment, so we dropped them off at the dealership & went to Fred Meyers (Known as Kroger in Texas, Smiths in Utah, King Soopers in Colorado, & several other names in other different states) & Sister Madsen & I got matching PJs! Also, it snowed, so we went out & played in the snow & we saw a fluffy dog! Then for the safe that night the District Leader let me send it cause I had told him I had ideas for the safe, so I sent in "send a picture of you & your companion upside down if you're safe" & then sister madsen & I put on our matching pjs & sent in a picture of ourselves doing headstands while everyone else just took regular selfies & then went & turned them in upside down    :( but we had fun so that's what counts

Tuesday: Zone Conference

We made a new friend on the internet! Reba! She's really awesome, & very receptive to the gospel! We also went to zone conference & after Zone conference we received Christmas packages! We also made cookies & then dropped them off to people.

Wednesday: The Sheep & the Goats

We made more friends, Joy & Rachel! Joy is learning how to pray, & Rachel has about 1000 questions & she's super smart! We had District council & it was actually really fun! We had a lesson then we played Jeopardy & all the 500 options were acting out ones, so that was fun. For the Book of Mormon one we acted out was Samuel the Lamanite, & I got to be one of the Nephites so my incompetency with sports really came in handy. Then of course we had a New Testament 500 option get chosen. Well, the thing for that was acting out one of Jesus' parables. We did the sheep & the goats. Sister Israelsen & were the sheep & got down on our hands & knees & started 'baaaaaaa-ing' & went towards Elder Call, who was playing the shepherd. Elder Ciccarello was playing the goat & he just ran on his hands & knees at Elder Call. Well apparently that's a lesser known parable,  nobody knew really what was going on,  & they saw that act with zero context in their minds other than that it was a parable. Anyway, the sheep represent Christ's followers who come to him & the goats represent those who try to thwart God's work. That day we made dinner at the family's house who is going to feed us for Christmas, so we helped them make the stuffing. But we're not allowed inside the house because of COVID-19 restrictions & the rules that President Auna has set into place. So, the family set up a folding table in the garage & got heaters out there for us to still be able to make dinner but also not freeze. It was really fun, we made some of the best stuffing I've ever tasted (and I never liked stuffing growing up lol)

Thursday: Christmas Ever!

A family in the ward provided us with Breakfast, & that was awesome! We went back to the family's house that's making us dinner & helped them make some other foods for their Family Christmas get-together, as a service in return for making us dinner (in part at least, I don't know how we could ever repay them for Christmas dinner!) Bishop's family provided us with dinner Christmas eve, & they have a super random Christmas eve tradition, which is to get chick-fil-a nuggets & mac-and-cheese on Christmas eve. It was pretty awesome though! We heart attacked a family in the ward who was having a hard time. They were having a lot of family over too, with little kids, so it's a wonder we didn't get caught putting the hearts & candy up. We went Christmas caroling with the Harbour Pointe sisters & that was pretty fun!

So yeah, it's been a good week and a half!

 

My next p-day isn't till next Friday because of new year’s!, so if you write to me on Monday & I don't respond, don't panic lol. I love you all so much!

 

Sister Alyssa Putnam

Washington Everett Mission

P.O. Box 13390

Mill Creek, WA 98082

for FedEx and UPS this is the address to use:

Sister Alyssa Putnam

Washington Everett Mission

16124  35th Avenue Southeast

Mill Creek, WA, 98012

S3 E2: I hope we still have enough brain cells

 (Elder Cummings)

大家好！

I'll explain the title in a bit but I gotta talk about my week first.

Because of Christmas we didn't have as many lessons or contacts with the people we're working with as usual but that's all good it was part of the plan. We ended up doing a lot of service and a lot of eating.

So Elder Pratt is a really good piano player so with all the free time we had this week cause everyone was spending it with their families we came up with this awesome idea to do a 2 piano duet and make an awesome video. So we'll be working on that for the next couple weeks if we ever have free time, I'm really excited! If you want to listen to the arrangement it's The Spirit of God by Nathan Schaumann. (Fun fact, Nathan's best friend was in Elder Pratt's MTC district and his other best friend is in the same mission as us). So basically we're famous.

Anyway, so Saturday we spent a large portion of the day at the church building, planning to really get back to work and start bothering people with our calls and messages two days after Christmas, not just the next one. So we did a lot of planning and finding the piano arrangement and working on other videos we're making. Later that evening we learned that two people from our congregation came earlier and legit passed out because of a natural gas leak in the building, and they were only there for about an hour...we were there for about 6...and our church ended up being cancelled the next because the gas was stinking up the whole building. We had NO idea and didn't smell ANYTHING. Super weird. Hopefully that means we're okay and didn't lose too many brain cells haha

Something I think we can all keep in mind is that "We wouldn't have Christmas if we didn't have Easter". The only reason we celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus is because of the resurrection of the Living Christ. We celebrate everything about our Savior because He has given us everything we have. The peace He so freely gives us comes only because of the suffering He has endured for us. Everything we have we owe to the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Merry Christmas yall!

Elder Cummings

Photo: the district celebrating some Christmas together...

Christmas!!

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person could hope for!

I hope you all had a great Christmas this week! It was a great time to relax and talk with family. On Christmas Eve and Christmas, we made about 60 cookies, and tons of cinnamon rolls. Then Elder Maunana and the Elders in our apartment, Elder Huang and Elder Holmes, and I caroled to like 30 families. If you want to check out our singing, look at my facebook! Let me tell you though, there's some good accidental harmonizing in there.

Later on we played some games. Elder Maunana played Jenga for the first time. He's a rockstar at it! Earlier in the week we had a zone Christmas party. Our mission President, President Hurley, is an auctioneer. So for the Christmas party he did an auction for us with fake money. It was pretty sweet. I snagged some chips and salsa, and Elder Maunana snagged some Reese's puffs.

I think one of the highlights though was Christmas eve evening. As an apartment we watched the new video of the nativity that the church put out, and then went outside, looked at the stars and read Luke 2 (the Christmas story) together. The spirit was super strong that evening, as it confirmed to me to importance of the Savior's birth 2000 years ago. The realization between the contrast of the Savior of the world, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Creator of all the earth, being born in a lowly stable was a humbling experience for me. I hope that I too, can be one of those wise men, who still try to seek him. I love Him, and I want to devote my whole life to Him.

Fun fact for the week: French fries are actually not made in France. They are made in Greece.

Pictures:

1. Last week we walked some their dogs for them.

2. My mom made 12 days of Christmas for someone that we were teaching that was a nativity. Every night for 12 nights before Christmas, we ding dong ditched someone we were teaching leaving something each night. This was us taking a picture on the last night.

 3. It was super cold and snowy as we walked the other day.

4. Us caroling on Christmas in our Christmas sweaters.

5. Us having a big Christmas breakfast (super delicious)

6. Making some cinnamon rolls.

S3 E1: Merry Christmas from your Asian Elders!

 (Elder Cummings)

大家好！

So Elder Christensen is out and we got.......Elder Pratt! Turns out I might only have him for a few more weeks though cause we just sent his visa application for South Korea in today. I was getting very used to looking over my 5' 4" companion and now I got 6' 3" Elder Pratt looking down on me so that's a change. We were driving home from transfers and I was like "so how long do you have in the mission?" And he looks at me and says "9 weeks". So. Basically I'm unofficially finishing his training even though I'm only 2 weeks older than him in the field? But it's been awesome, the guy is learning Korean! There's only 1 other Korean speaking missionary in the mission and no other Mandarin speakers so we're pretty special...

This weekend we had an awesome miracle. We were just calling some people who had requested visits from us and whatnot (usually not super fruitful, most them say they never filled one out or they don't remember even though you have to fill out your number, name and address to even submit it). Nevertheless it's exciting cause you don't know what personalities you'll run into over the phone. We called this one lady and I introduced ourselves and asked how she was doing. She just said "bad" and I was like "oh man, im so sorry what can we do for you this evening Wendy?" And she straight says "you can never call this number again, bye" and just ends the call there. Super epic. A couple minutes later we get a call back from Wendy's number...I answer it. I'm just sitting there sweating as I pass through the slowest couple seconds of silence in my life... All I hear is "Hey it's Wendy" I'm just thinking that she's gonna roast me again but she doesn't say anything so I say "Wendy you know you just told us to never call you again right?" Anyway she had called back to figure out why I had said "I'm sorry" so I told her I THOUGHT she said she was doing bad but she was doing BLESSED! We both started laughing it was soooo funny.

We just start chatting and talking and have a really nice conversation. She had an aneurysm about a decade ago and it permanently damaged most of her left side and left her in a coma for 2 months. After she recovered she felt that God was giving her a second chance to be with her family with her husband and 4 kids. She's super funny and wanted to meet with us to hear our Christmas message and so we could share our testimonies with each other. We both agreed God must've made me mishear what she said cause that's the main reason she called back cause she was super confused. We're meeting her and her family tonight!

Merry Christmas Y'all!

Elder Cummings

Photo!

1. Just Joel, Elder Pratt and I in a nice wide-angle selfie

Merry Christmas!

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person could hope for!

Mauri! (Meaning hello in Kiribati! Pronounced Mowdi!) This week was another week with lots of music! We went caroling with one family, and Elder Maunana and I sang Oh Holy Night with a few other men in one of the Sacrament meeting we cover. Many or the wards had a special meeting filled with singing Christmas songs and bearing testimony of Christ. It was times filled with the Spirit. Music and speaking of Christ are the times when I feel the spirit the strongest. We also will be caroling with several other families this week!

On Christmas Eve and Christmas, we'll be focusing on service. Giving out cookies, shoveling driveways, and the like. On Tuesday this week, we have a zone Christmas party. Our apartment all bought really ugly Christmas sweaters. Next week you'll have those pictures to look forward to! Today, I'd like to end with my testimony on the Savior, which is very important to me during this special season:

I know that God loves us. He knows us. He knows our concerns and struggles, our weaknesses and strengths. He rejoices in our success and feels and understands our sorrows. He knew we would struggle in this life, and so He provided an eternal gift to us, that would bring hope to the hopeless, peace to the weary, and joy to the downtrodden. This was of course the gift of His only begotten son, Jesus Christ.

Given to us out of love, Jesus Christ was the greatest gift anyone could have ever received. It's through him we can find happiness. It's through him we can find peace, healing, and love. I know that he is our Savior and Redeemer. He died for each one of us. As we focus our lives on Him, we will be blessed in more ways than we can comprehend. We can make this time the happiest time of our life because of our focus on Him. I love my Savior and I love my Heavenly Father. I am grateful for them. In the name of Jesus Christ amen.

Love you all! Merry Christmas!

Pictures:

1. We found a Kimono at one of the moves we helped with this week. I think it's exactly my style

2. Elder Maunana was very excited about shoveling snow, because he's never done it before

3. Elder Maunana has never done snow Angels, so naturally we had to do that!

4. The Kiribati flag we hung on the wall

5. Our Christmas tree!

400 Candy Canes

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person could hope for,

This week our apartment, two companionships, delivered 400 candy canes with our number and an offer of free service or a message on Christ's birth. Hopefully fruit comes of that. We also helped perform a live drive in nativity that the mission did! They had live camels, sheep, and a donkey! I was a wise man for half of it and townsman for the other half.

We also found two new people to teach. One was a man named Nick who is a Christian that we shared the Light the World video to. He seemed really interested in learning more about Jesus Christ. Hopefully we will be able to meet with him again! All of this just helps grow my testimony that God's work still progresses despite challenges and a global pandemic!

Also, sidenote, Elder Maunana taught me how to count to 10 in Kiribati this week! It just sounds like I'm mumbling the entire time.

Pictures:

1-2. Candy Canes

3-4. The live nativity

5. Someone gave us a container of gluten free cheeseballs. They're the nastiest thing ever.

6. Elder Maunana loves the snow!

Doggies!!

 (Sister Putnam)

Okay, so I get so many ideas for email subject lines throughout the week and I can only choose one!

That is

unless I make a title for every day within the email!

So, I'm going to be doing that, in addition to having a subject line!

Monday: Spell Czech is not my fiend. I mean, spell check is not my friend.

So on preparation day we went to WinCo, which is apparently a store lots of missionaries love to go to because its cheap!!! Then afterwards we went to Target and got Christmas presents for the sisters in the Harbour Pointe ward, and then we went to the Harbour Pointe sisters' apartment for lunch, where I wrote emails, and man, I do not care for autocorrect on this phone! We hung out over there for a few hours, and after that we came home and had dinner, and then after wards we went with the Harbour Pointe sisters to do service at a members house. We made wreaths and I essentially fought with inanimate objects until I’d created something that resembled what a wreath looked like lol. They actually turned out pretty well. The members had a 9 month old dog, so it was a big puppy, and when we'd set the wreaths down on the garage floor where the member asked us to set them down, the dog would pick up the wreaths and hold them in his mouth it was adorable.  The member was going out of town and needed the wreaths for the ward Christmas party, so Sister Madsen and I, not being super busy, took the stuff for wreaths home to finish later. Then, we went and hung out at bishops house, he's really cool and motivating. He talked about how Satan is really sneaky about taking away our agency and how it's really important to be careful. We always leave bishops house feeling motivated to do good things cause he's just so good at being inspiring!

Tuesday: Good news! I saw a dog today!

If you understood that reference, I applaud you, cause I love that movie!

On Tuesday, we went on exchanges with the STLs, and I was with Sister Richards. We got lunch together, and she has Lebanese heritage, so she was asking all about the middle east cause she wants to go there someday so I was telling her about that and that was awesome! Then we went and raked and weeded someone's yard, but the lady whose yard we raked didn't have anything we could rake with so we just used our hands, and for not having rakes, we did a pretty good job! Afterwards we walked a lady's dog, and the dog was so cute, he was a pitbull lab, and we just took him to a little park and played fetch for a bit and he was so cute, he loved to guard the toys that he wanted us to throw and we were like "we need the toys in order to throw them" and he kept guarding them but we did eventually get to throw the toys for him. he was a good boy. On the way home we listened to Les. Mis. songs and then exchanges were over because quarantine exchanges are weird lol. Apparently regular exchanges are an all-day thing. So then, sister Madsen and I had scheduled to teach the Linton family that evening and they rescheduled :( so we went out to the car and made more wreaths (we decided to do it outside because making them inside would've created a huge mess). Afterwards, we taught a girl in Kenya named Mode over facetime. This week she said she'd wanted to fast, and when we called her that night we talked to her and she thanked us for showing her what fasting was because she felt it brought her closer to God! And she's super interested in the Book of Mormon, and she's just super awesome, her faith is amazing!!! We can't wait to teach her again!

Wednesday: Boom! Roasted

On Wednesday we went to the salvation army warehouse and filled donation meal boxes with the necessary items with a ton of other missionaries, and Chick-Fil-A was so nice and catered for free! Then we had district council. So we have a district group chat, and they've been doing phone calls every night, and sister Madsen and I thought it was just for fun, and the last two nights we hadn't been getting on because we were tired. Well during district council, the District Leader was like "Okay, so we've been doing district calls to build unity, is there any way we could make it so everyone can make it to the video chats?" And everyone kinda glanced at us and we were like "Oh sorry we'll come" but yeah we got roasted. The video chats are actually pretty fun. Any way after dinner that day we called this one elderly lady in the ward and gave her a quick lesson, and then we taught the Lintons about the plan of salvation, so that was awesome! The Lintons are a family of 4, the wife is an inactive member who wants to be active, and she wants her husband to join the church, so hopefully her husband will begin to see how being a part of the church will benefit his life, both temporally and eternally and want to be baptized. prayers would be greatly appreciated for that!! Then afterwards we got on the district phone call so we wouldn't get roasted lol.

Thursday: We ate cookies and second cookies!

On Thursday, we were able to get several texting lessons in, and we taught our ward mission leader about 1 Nephi 7:17-18 where Nephi prays to have the bands broken and instead of becoming strong enough to have the bands broken, the Lord helped him loosen the bands, and we talked about how the Lord answers our prayers not always in the way we wanted but in the way we need. Thursday's light the world challenge was to find something about a person in your family history to talk about, so I posted a quote by Ann Cannon Woodbury, my 3rd great grandmother: "It is better to wear out than to rust out." Then we made cookies and there were a few extra so we ate a few cookies, and then we delivered cookies to people and some people would. not. stop. talking haha. There was one lady we said bye to like 5 times and she kept starting the convo again. Quarantine seems to have made so many people become lonely :( They're all great people though!

Friday: the forbidden forest (not really it just looked enchanted lol)

So we had a mission devotional on Friday and as of Friday the mission is quarantine free! no missionaries have covid in this mission! as of right now, that is. After lunch on Friday Sister Madsen and I went on a walk in a pretty forest/hike and we talked so that was fun! it was good to get out and get to know each other better! Then we mad more cookies and delivered them to people again, and lots of people had dogs!! and then we had a district phone call and that was fun.

Saturday: A short-notice talk

Okay, on Saturday we went to the bishop's storehouse for like an hour and then Sister Madsen and I had to leave cause we had to go to New Missionary Training, then afterwards we went to a drive thru Christmas party that was going on at that building at the time (they invited us to, so we had to!) They gave us soup and hot chocolate and we stopped somewhere to eat while it was still warm, and found out while we were eating that I had been asked to speak in church on Sunday, so that was great! Sister Madsen and I also found out that we both love the office, so that's great! So yeah then we went home and I cranked out a talk on how sacrifice brings for the blessings of heaven. Then we talked to some other sisters in the hotel, and then one sister was going to leave on Sunday, finishing her mission, and so we took a hotel squad picture together, and then we went to bed after getting on the district call.

Sunday: Christmas Decorations!

I finished writing my talk and printed it, and then we went to church and I gave my first talk as a missionary, in the talk I mentioned that I lived in Saudi Arabia, and so after church one member came up to Sister Madsen and I and said he'd lived in Saudi Arabia for a while, he knew President Christiansen! That's so cool! Then we went to come, follow me, and then one family in the ward gave us dinner, and it was amazing! They gave us ribs, and potatoes, and mac an cheese! Like what the heck! and then after wards we decorated our hotel room with Christmas decorations!

Okay, I love you all! Just a heads up, our next preparation days are Christmas and new year’s, so you won't hear from me until next Thursday but I love hearing from you all!

Love you and miss you all!

And my mom said some people are asking for an address to mail things to, so I’m just going to include it in the signature right down here!

For usps it’s:

Sister Alyssa Putnam

Washington Everett Mission

P.O. Box 13390

Mill Creek, WA 98082

 

for FedEx Amazon and UPS this is the address to use:

Sister Alyssa Putnam

Washington Everett Mission

16124  35th Avenue Southeast

Mill Creek, WA, 98012