Miracle of the week! Baptisms, baptisms, baptisms galore in the mission. It's been so wonderful. Our investigator who came back to church about a month ago after dropping us last transfer got baptized this Saturday! It was a terrific service. This woman is so wonderful. She's really, really shy. So she was pretty nervous to bear her testimony, and when she did it was really simple. She said "I know that Jesus Christ is the Only Begotten Son of God and that this church is the one true church on the earth. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen." I felt the Spirit so strongly when she said that - and just those are the things that are the fundamentals of the gospel. Christ is the Son of God (and everything that that entails), and that His church has been restored. There is so much meaning in those two simple statements.
There have been so many miracles here in our mission during this Christmas season, and this last week we had 12-13 baptisms! (I'm not quite sure why President reported it to us as 12-13, it would seem that there could only be 12 or 13, but who knows...?) We met one of our other investigators at a baptism later that day, and it was really special to be there with her and see her get excited about her baptism in a couple weeks. She kept telling everyone whenher baptism was going to be.
I was reading through those letters you sent me as a family, and I'm so sorry I've been bad at answering all of your questions, but here are some answers to some of dad's questions in his letter:
Is there good chocolate in Armenia?
The best! They have lots of Kinder chocoloate, so we're pretty happy campers.
Christmas/Holiday foods/traditions:
Christmas is pretty much nonexistant, it's all about new years. They have christmas trees and things, but they are called holiday trees and everyone associates them with the week-long new years party. Everyone travels around from neighbor's to neighbor's houses and to their family members and eats food for about a week straight. We're looking forward to the adventure that is going to be!
Common Armenian names:
Female: Hasmik. Anahit. Lusine. Karine
Male: Ashot. Artak. Gagik. Grigor. Samvel. Karen
We had Sister Andrus and Sister Long come to our district meeting for Family History training here - and I loved it! (They're the missionaries up in the fmaily history center - a thing they just started this transfer) The Lord's work is just amazing - especially how complete it is. As I was studying a little bit in D&C 138, I was really hit with how amazing it is that the greats of the greats are working on the other side of the veil to preach the gospel to the ancestors of those that we are serving, and our own ancestors. It truly is a miracle that we are now more about to do that work here in Armenia. (That's a long story for another day about all the miracles that happened to get a family history center here in Armenia with records from the Armenian Apostolic church that we're able to use to do family history work and temple ordinaces for the people here.)
I'm so grateful for my Savior and His love for each of us. We are so blessed to have His Atonement available to us in so many ways in our lives. This is truly His work, and it's happening on both sides of the veil, right now.
Love you all so much!
Love,
Sister Kieffer
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