Dear Family,
I hope you all had a great New Year's this last week! It was such a good time to set some new goals for the upcoming year and I'm excited for all that will come in this upcoming year. This last week we were able to get into 2 different lessons from our tracting some apartment complexes. One was with a younger girl who lived with her boyfriend who seems fairly interested in what we had to tell her. I was showing her some of my family pictures and she said she had seen some of those temples in a book before which was really cool. We have no idea where she saw them but it was great that she was able to make that connection. She also started out by telling us she had a firm belief that the Provaslavnic church was not true which made it alot easier to teach her because she listened to us with an open mind. We are hoping to find her at home this week so we can teach her more and help her progress. Many of the people we talk to always bring up some of the traditions they were taught to believe and when we ask them how they came to know whether it was true or not, i have not yet met one who answered they had received an answer. It was just something they did. Its been really interesting to me and has strengthened my testimony when i think back on the times where my testimony was strengthened by the Spirit i would feel when i would seek it out through prayer and obedience. The second person we met with was quite the character. He invited us in right from the start as soon as he heard we were missionaries. He was pretty distracted by different things in the room and it was hard to keep the focus of the lesson as he would suddenly want to show us his medical license or pictures of his family or his cat etc. By some miracle we taught him the first lesson. We hope that he still is interested and hope to get back to him later this week also. Besides that we have been continuing to contact and tract and also meeting with one of the only members in our area. They are great and we hope we can start teaching some of their friends. New Years here was a huge celebration! This is when most of the parties and gift giving happens. We were asked to come in a little earlier so we could be off the streets. The people above us were having a grand party because we could hear them most of the night. Around 1 in the morning, a firework show went off out side our window and we all popped out of bed to watch it. It was super loud but fun to watch. My companion and I said happy new years and went right back to sleep. :) I'll try to remember my camera cord this next week so i can send some pictures of our town but I hope you all have a great week and may the lord be with you in all that you do.
With Love,
Elder Ostler
