Vestel, Abigail T

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Hello, my lovely friends. Today is Christmas Eve, but strangely it feels like just another day. We had an awesome Christmas party with all of the other city missionaries, and I even got to FaceTime my family as they opened their presents early. For me, Christmas is one of the best holidays (the best obviously being Halloween). I love the chance to sit around the fire watching Christmas movies with some of my family. It is amazing to take time to relax. However, it is much different on a mission. I can't have a fire due to mission standards, my family is on the other side of the world, and there is only one short day a week that I am able to rest from the intense hustle and bustle of missionary work. So what makes this Christmas great? I'll admit it isn't the sweet presents you get from a white elephant. And it definitely is not all of the strangers staring at you because you're a different race. It's the silence. The ability to contemplate the meani...

Hello Everyone, This week has been crazy busy, so bear with me as I give a quick rundown of it. We had a huge service project for DIC, which was amazing. We made several hundred food bags to give out to the needy across the country. For those of you who don't know, DIC is Deseret International Charities, and they are funded by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was really happy to be doing some service for this amazing foundation. All of our visas are under the DIC name, and we are officially English teachers through DIC. Super cool! We got to go to two other baptisms last week! It was so cool to watch! We also got to eat some amazing grilled cheese and homemade tomato soup made by the beautiful and amazing Sister Udall and Sister Butler. I definitely copped the recipe and will be making that for my companion and myself. Speaking of my companion, we received transfer news on Monday morning, and I saw my name next to a sister Nergui. I freaked out because I thought I...

Hello All, Sorry for not sending an email last week, I was out all day Christmas shopping and the only email that got sent out was my president email. So I have a lot to catch you all up on. We had an awesome exchange with our STLs last Tuesday. Sister Udall and I stayed here with Sister Boyle and Sister Tsolmon went with Sister Lee to Sansar. It was honestly so cool. We also finished up all of Temun's lessons and he passed his baptismal interview (which was super cool) and he is getting baptized tonight. We are all super excited, to say the least. We had an awesome Sunday as well. We were really praying for new investigators since ours are really busy with school and some have been ghosting us. So fervently we prayed, and we had 2 new investigators come to church!!!! They are so prepared as well. Honestly, it has been one of the biggest blessings I have seen here in Mongolia. Update: The baptism went well. Temun was very brave and was able to get baptized with cold water. Consider...