I cannot believe Christmas is in like 2 days!! Woop woop! I hope everyone has good plans and gets good gifts!!
At the beginning of the week we performed our shadow play like a trillion times at the Kanazawa train station! It was even more special than the first time we performed it! Even though I moved to one of the coldest zones in the mission, I am very grateful I can be here and could be apart of this performance! Before then, we went streeting for hours in the pouring rain to get people to come! We met lots of fun people...haha
We had our ward Christmas party and Christmas church and of course they were both amazing! We were really trying to get lots of people to go to both, so we decided to visit some members we didn't know to invite them. We knocked on their door and introduced ourselves and invited them to both events. Through big smiles and a few chuckles, they said they were going. They then invited us in for yummy milk and cookies! (Shoutout small fry) After visiting with them for a minute, me and MacDonald shimai realized that he had joined our Sunday school lesson last week, and that they were very active members. No wonder they were so willing to come to the party they were already planning on going to... We ended up having a good time with them and listened to their fun stories! Literally the cutest old couple ever!
It has been sooooo cold and rainy here, so doing things outside have been hard. On one of the nicer days here we took a long bike ride to visit a couple that have been taught in the past. They ended up speaking perfect English and the husband was straight out of Philadelphia! It was pretty cool talking to them and ending with a message about prayer. I am not sure if things will go very far with them, but I am really hoping and praying for a miracle! 
Life has been good and I am surprisingly not very homesick with the Christmas season. It is fun getting emails from people back home and I even thank the people who have thought about sending emails, but haven't gotten around to it. I know I have a lot of support and love from back home and through the people I have met. I truly am grateful for every single one of you! The mission is hard, harder than I thought it would be. There is the culture change, language barrier, thrown into things brand new having no clue what's going on, lots of pressure. There is also the mental part of it. Not feeling equipped enough, comparing, feeling guilty for messing up, feeling you should be doing better. I still struggle with a lot of these things, but something I have really come to understand is how loving, merciful, forgiving, and understanding our savior is. He knows we are all just doing our best. Even if you don't feel like you are doing your best, He understands how hard life is. Give yourself some grace and be proud of how far you have come. You are always more loved than you know!!
Make it a good week everyone and have a very good merry Christmas!
<3 Sister Peterson
12/23/2024
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