Elder Jared Teeples Mission Blog: The Spirit of Christmas is Service.

Hellooooo!

This week was really great! I love the Christmas spirit, especially in the mission field (: It's amazing! I don't know, there's just something about the spirit of giving and missionary work that bring the most amazing feelings! I love this work, and I love serving others! It's such a blessing in my life!

The area is doing really great right now. Dee is progressing really well! We are so stoked for her baptism this Saturday! It's going to be huge! She had her baptismal interview this past week, and passed with flying colors. We were going to talk to her afterwards about who she wants doing what for the baptismal service, but after the interview SHE brought it up to US with an almost completely filled out program, with prayers, hymns, a musical number, and everything. She is ready for sure (: We have a lesson with her tomorrow, and it should be great! Ryan is still doing great! We were pretty busy this past week, and we've got another really busy week this week! We are going to be doing some service for the catholic church in Thousand Oaks by helping them set up for a Christmas program thing. Good things are happening! I'll be really sad to leave this area. There are just so many good things happening! I will miss it. Regarding transfers, I have felt some strong promptings on where I think I'll go, as far as a specific ward goes... But I trust fully that President Felix is called of God and that whatever ward he assigns me to for this next transfer, I will know it is where God wants me to be!

Elder Moser is still doing great. We both had a great week this week! It really is cool already having a foundation of friendship before being companions, and having seen that grow throughout the transfer. We really enjoy serving together! We have a lot of fun while still working hard.

My testimony was strengthened this week on fasting and prayer. I won't go into the details of it, due to it being pretty personal, but in brief, we prayed and fasted in faith for a recent convert who had been struggling since he had been baptized. We prayed and fasted that he would have a softened heart, and it worked! He is a completely different person now. Amazing! I know that fasting and praying in faith work, and it truly brings miracles!

For service this week we had a couple good opportunities to help members out. This type of service was more to gain member trust, and to build our relationships with them. We did service for the Ewings by helping them trim down this huge bush! It was awesome (: It was partially raining too. I wish I had more time to tell you about my other service opportunities!

Have a great week! You are in my thoughts and prayers! Love you (:

Love,

Elder Teeples!