Dear Familia Eternitas!

Dear Familia Eternitas!

I hope you all have had a fantastic winter break and New Year! Sister Burt and I sure did. We had to be in our apartment by 6 p.m. on New Year's Eve, so we had our weekly planning session and drank Martinelli's all evening. And then we went to bed at 9:30. I know, it sounds anticlimactic, but it was the most beautiful thing ever! Nothing says "Bring in the New Year!" like extra sleep when you are a missionary. :)

Sister Burt and I also brought out our lumberjack side this week. One of our friends, Tina, has been through a really rough time lately. To top it off, she got flooded in on Christmas and the tree in her front yard fell over. So we rounded up some of the ward members who burn wood in their woodstoves, brought them over, and helped them cut up the tree and haul off the wood. I didn't realize how much it meant to her until we started talking to her afterwards, and heard about the difference it made to her. Everyone always talks about the "warm fuzzy feeling" they get when they serve other people, and I usually kind of roll my eyes when that convo gets started up because I rarely experience that, but I really felt it this time. I would totally peel pine needles off of their branches in the frigid cold again to see look on her face and feel the feeling I felt when we told her we were going to clear away her tree because she couldn't and that she wasn't going to pay us.

We were also able to bring our other friend, (whose name also happens to be Tina) to church with us this week! It was a great experience for her, and very different from what she is used to. She told us afterwards that she's used to dancing, chanting, shouting, and being "slayed in the Spirit" when she goes to church. Gotta love these Holy Rollers!

I love you all, have a great week!

Love, Sister Ward