My First White Christmas! (Estes Park wk#12)

HI Everyone! 

Hope you had a Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year this week! Crazy that 2014 has come and gone. I saw an email earlier today about making New Year's resolutions. I somehow didn't think of doing that yet even though I hear nearly all of them are given up on after a month. 

Christmas was great! This was my first White Christmas (as far as I remember). It started snowing at ~10am and was steady the whole day. I love it when it snows here because usually that means it isn't crazy windy. I had a great breakfast and dinner with two families from church. I am so blessed that it worked out! I was very well fed. Also, I had the opportunity to Skype my family! It was really awesome and nice to talk to them kinda in person and hear that they are doing well!

We have been meeting with this young couple (Camden & Amanda) 23 and 24 years old for nearly 2 months. He hasn't come much to church for a while and she is an investigator. A few weeks ago we finally were able to persuade Amanda to close in prayer. She literally said, "this is dumb" in the middle of the prayer! It finished and turned out to be an ok prayer. It was real at least! Then a few days ago we were teaching a lesson at their house again and invited her to pray to close. It was AMAZING! It was ~5 minutes of genuine real prayer. It was one of the best prayers that I have heard! They have been praying together before bed a few days a week recently. I even found out that she had a prayer in this past week that brought Camden to tears! That is extremely exciting to really be helping people develop a prayer relationship with their Father in Heaven. It is the best!!!

Another miracle this week. We were at Marcy's house yesterday to pray with her because she was extremely stressed about her daughter's situation. Literally while Elder Schenk was saying a prayer to comfort her, Marcy's phone rang. It was her daughter! Turns out the problems are all being resolved! So now Marcy doesn't have to worry about it. Additionally, she was able to go to church this weekend for the second time! She hasn't been able to make it most weeks because she is on oxygen and has a really bad back. During church her back was really starting to hurt. About 3 minutes after praying for relief, it came! She has experienced so many miracle and blessings in her life recently. I am so happy to be part of helping her learn more about the Gospel, pray more to her Heavenly Father, and help her to change. Her faith has been growing a lot! It is so cool to see before our very eyes!

Also! We had a really wonderful Christmas Eve. Every Wednesday we have a District Mtg in Longmont with 6 other missionaries. The 2 sisters suggested at the beginning of the transfer that we have a White Elephant! So we went for it. I mentioned before about the tree that we got that was ~2ft tall. We took that and all 8 of us brought a present for it! Overall it was really good. The sisters took it a little too far and actually got really awesome presents… Fortunately Elder Schenk ended up with one of them! A RC helicopter! Pretty sweet. And it is only fitting that one of the Elders ended up with the present he brought! Haha. It was good times for sure. Immediately after 6 of us (the Zone Leaders had to go to another meeting) went to sing Christmas carols at 2 nursing homes. Everyone REALLY appreciated hearing the Christmas songs! I was very glad that the sisters again decided they wanted to do it and 6 of us were able to bring some joy into the lives of these older people during the holiday season. 

Lastly, I have to reiterate from last week. On a much more regular basis recently I have been humbled by the myriad of blessings in my life. I can't believe how many of them I take for granted. I think it is because I have been hearing about other people's lives recently and how not ideal they have been. Some kids from church here were born to women who were heavy drinkers or drug users and will have mental issues for the rest of their lives. They aren't being raised by their biological parents because they are not competent parents. I never really considered my parents raising me as a blessing! Or that my mom didn't drink alcohol or do drugs while pregnant. I am just extremely blessed and grateful to have been given all the opportunities that I have been given. I am recognizing them more and more these days.

Have a great week and may your next year be even better than this year!

Sincerely,

Elder Jeff Campbell