Merry Christmas!

Hello!

Sorry I was a super slacker last week and didn't email but we were
suuuuper busy with transfers. I am serving my last transfer back up in
Connecticut. I'm about an hour away from Danbury, in Stamford. I was
sad to leave the Bronx but I'm excited to be here too. It's kind of
bittersweet. Sister Tirado is training a new missionary so I'm super
excited for her. My new companion is Sister Hansen. She has been on
medical leave for 7 months and before that she was only in the mission
for 6 weeks so she's a newer missionary. It's kind of a weirder
situation for both of us because she has some experience but she's
been gone for so long so both of us are trying to figure out how much
she remembers and what she's not super comfortable doing yet. But it's
been a really good change for me and a good transition for her. The
ward is super awesome. The most functional ward I've been in my whole
mission. We actually have most of the ward council at correlation and
everyone is super willing to help us with lessons and we've already
had some referrals. It's awesome. They are super on top of missionary
work and we're super grateful. For some reason they think it's okay if
sacrament meeting goes 35 minutes over though. And apparently that's
an every week thing. Plus sacrament meeting is the last meeting so it
makes for some really long church meetings. Oh well. Life can't be
perfect.

I'm pretty sure the weather is confused as to what season we're in
because I didn't even wear a jacket yesterday. It was so warm! I love
it! Makes me feel like I'm back on the west coast. Speaking of west
coast, I saw Sister Nielson at transfers last week, as you all
probably saw on Faceboook. It was so fun to see her and I'm super
excited for her to be here. She's serving in Scarsdale and opening up
an area in the ward President Morgan attends. I know some of the
people in the ward from having served in that stake most of my mission
and I think she's going to love it there.

I got a note from Sister Tirado and she told me that the Reyes family
went to the ward Christmas party that they had in the Bronx the Friday
after I left. I literally almost cried. I am so excited and happy for
them. I mean I know it doesn't sound like much that they went to an
activity but they've been offended by a lot of people so the fact that
they were willing to go to this activity means that they'll be more
willing to start coming back to church one day. I'm so excited for
them!!

Christmas is going to be crazy! We have so many appointments for
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I think we'll be eating like 6 times
between the two days. Which now that I think about it, that's a normal
number of times to eat in two days. But when your eating at members
houses, especially Hispanic members, that's a lot of food. Plus we've
had a dinner appointment every night since we got here and we have one
every night this week. People really love to feed us here. We're
grateful though because it's helped us to get to know ward members
more quickly and start to develop relationships with them. Also super
crazy event for Christmas is that our dinner appointment is with a
family that is related to Fernando, the investigator I taught and gave
up cookies for in New Rochelle. I'm secretly hoping that Fernando is
planning to spend time with his family that day so that I can see him
and see how things are going.

I think that's pretty much all for now. I hope you all have a great
Christmas and remember what this season is really all about - Christ.
I'm so grateful for that birth of our Savior and for all the comfort
and help that He gives to me each day. It's been amazing to see on my
mission how aware The Lord is of my needs and how He is involved in
everything that I do. I'm so grateful to have the knowledge of the
gospel in my life so that I have more direction and more peace. I love
you all!
Merry Christmas!
Hermana Parkin