Merry Christmas!

Querida familia!! :)

  It was so good to be able to skype with you all yesterday!! Everybody is getting so big!  (That was meant for the nieces and nephew, not anyone else, just to clarify :) )  Happy Birthday Brinlee!!
  Well, this has been an exciting and busy week... On Tuesday we had to leave at 5:30 to get up to Spokane so that we could be in our trainers training at 8:45.  Early morning, but all good.  And then I got my companion, Sis. Probst!! She is so awesome and I love being her companion.  Like I told you yesterday, she's from Highland, UT but no she doesn't know Coach Gelwix.  She is optimistic and willing and ready to work, so this week has been great and we've seen a lot of miracles.
  Training is definitely quite the experience.  I've learned a whole new measure of work and dedication.  I've also depended a lot on Heavenly Father.  I love that we have the chance to talk with him.  On Christmas Eve after we left our member dinner, there was still a good chunk of prime time left so we went to go knock on some apartment complexes.  I had a certain one in mind, but I couldn't find them.  I felt like we were just driving around then and in my mind I was thinking, "This isn't going to do. We just need to go talk to some people!" So I turned down a street and parked and said, "We're going to go knock this complex."  So we got out and went and the first door we knocked on was this family who were just sitting home on Christmas Eve and they are quite the family.  We had a great discussion with the Dad about the gospel and he shared some of his ideas from the Bible and they were pretty close to what we interpret from the Bible.  It was a really neat lesson!  We had a chance to talk with him about the Book of Mormon and we set up an appointment with them for tonight. We're really excited to go back.
  Update on the Lopez family, we've been having a kind of strange week with them and not being able to contact them, but we did on Christmas eve.  We went over there and introduced Hna Probst to them and then shared a scripture.  Before we were about to have prayer with them, Maria told me, "I had a dream Sis. Haws..."  I don't know what it is, but latinos always have crazy dreams and they're sweet!!  Well, in her dream she was walking up these stairs and she enters into this room and there's all these people in paradise. They're drinking fruity drinks and there's just a peace in the room and she knows that they are members of the church.  In the back of them she sees a beautiful landscape of Wenatchee and she just feels so good... Well, the people there tell her, "This is what it's like.  This peace, you can have it all the time."  And she said that she had just a huge feeling of peace.  Then she goes on to interpret her dream... "The steps, those are steps that I know I need to take to get to that feeling of peace. The water that was there, well, I know what that means.  And I'm not quite ready for that yet, but I know that I need to just keep taking those steps."  We're going to keep working with them and keep helping her take those steps so that she can have those feelings of peace that come from gospel. I love missionary work!
  Heavenly Father blesses and helps us out.  He knows what we need and when we need it.  I know that he loves me and that he loves my investigators.  I love this time of year and the extra focus that is put on our Savior.  I'm grateful for this gospel; for the Book of Mormon, for Joseph Smith, and for a living prophet, Thomas S. Monson. This church is true!!  I hope you all have a fantastic week!  I love you all!

Love,
  Hermana Haws