Happy December!!

Hello, my beautiful family! 

How are you doing??? How was Thanksgiving for you all?? It sounds like St. George was a blast, and I hope it was fun for everyone else too! I was thinking about y'all hoping it was wonderful :) It´s officially Christmas season! I am so excited, I can barely stand it! We set up our cute little tree and hung up some lights, and we are so happy it´s Christmas! I can´t believe it´s December already! That is just wild. How is everyone? I hope you are all happy and loving life :)

Our Thanksgiving was so much fun! Here it´s not a thing at all, nobody knows about it, so we made our own Thanksgiving :) There are two elders here with us in Catarroja and we are all buddies, so we ate with them. The two of us made all this food--you guys would be so proud! We made mashed potatoes (they don´t have those here, so we had to invent how to make them, but they turned out so good!), rolls (a sketchy recipe from the elders that actually turned out well!), vegetables, pumpkin cookies, and pumpkin shakes :) And the elders bought a big chicken, cause there are no turkeys here haha. It was so magical! We ate in the church and it was so fun. We were all so happy, and it was magical :) I was thinking about you guys, though, hoping that it was good. Oh yeah, and last Monday all the missionaries in our zone had a turkey bowl, and we played flag football haha! It was so funny. The next day we were all so sore, we could seriously barely walk. Our bodies are becoming so old from being missionaries! It´s wild haha. It was super fun though :)

This week we had some amazing miracles!!!!!!!!!!! Susan and Cristobal are getting baptized!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Wohooo!!!!!!! They are the couple from Ecuador who are just the sweetest, most humble people in the world. They are so wonderful! We have been trying to get them to be baptized forever, but they always say they are scared and don´t want to mess up after baptism. Finally in this cita, we talked about the Doctrine of Christ and the sacrament and baptism and exactly what it means, and we had the old bishop come with us. He gave an incredible testimony about the Savior. The Spirit was SO strong, and they finally said they would prepare to be baptized for the 13th of December. It was amazing! They said they hadn't given God time to answer their questions, and they are going to read and pray and really prepare for this. They have come to church about four times and have tons of member friends, so it´s so good! We are so happy, we can barely stand it. They are the most wonderful people ever and we are so excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then we had a lesson with a friend of a member named Claudia. She has come to a few activities and really liked them. She´s from Peru and is a young mom. We had the most amazing cita with her where she told us how she feels too unworthy to follow the Savior and how she never feels like she can be good enough. I have felt that way SO many times, so I was able to tell her how I have been overcoming that with the help of the Savior and especially the Book of Mormon. It was such an incredible cita; the Spirit was so strong, and we all felt it so strongly. She said she was so excited to read the Book of Mormon, she could barely wait to get home and read it :) We are so excited about her, and she is amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pretty much, things are really good here :) Catarroja is kind of a hard area in some ways, because it´s such a small town that everyone already knows about the Church, so finding new people is really hard. But it´s wonderful, because the members are so, so, so, so sweet and humble and just the most loving people I have ever met. They are all so willing to help us and are so good about inviting their friends to things. So we are seeing a lot of miracles. I just love these people; I can´t even tell you how cute they are. I am so excited to spend Christmas with them :)

I love being a missionary! I just love it. I love thinking about the things we did in a day--it´s just so fun to spend all our time and energy in bringing people to Christ. Like this week we were with a less-active family and we were like, "What can we do so you come to church?! We NEED you there!!!!!!" They said, "Okay, come ring our door at 9, and you can eat breakfast with us." So we went yesterday before church and ate breakfast with them and got them to church. It was so fun! I just love it. I love having the chance to invite people to Christ. This morning I was looking at my chapa, and I just felt so overwhelmed with the question, "Why does the Lord trust me with the salvation of these people? Why does he trust ME to wear His name on my chest?" But something that I am learning is that the Lord never called us to be perfect servants; He called us to try our best, to love, and to do what He asks. That is all he wants! Something I read in a manual the other day said that "repentance is not God´s back up plan"--that IS the plan. Repentance is something we do every day, so that every morning we can wake up completely clean, with a new slate. That is the plan, to repent every day, and He gives us the opportunity to be clean. I think that is amazing, cause before my mission I always thought repentance was a scary thing that you only did if you had done something really bad. But no, it´s something that allows us to be clean every single day, and it´s the way we apply the atonement and God´s mercy in our lives. I am so grateful for His mercy and the chance He gives us to repent :)

I love you all SO much, I can barely stand it. Thank you so much for being my support and for always being there! I am the luckiest missionary ever to have you as my family :) I love you all madly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love, Hermana Boyer :)

P.S. Transfers are next week, so I won´t email until Tuesday! :) And yes, Hermana Shake and I have been praying for the last two weeks that we will be together for Christmas haha :) I just adore her!

This is us having our magical Thanksgiving dinner haha :)

This is the Catarroja crew--aren't we cool? :)