Elder Mason Moon: "mira, that's the hand of God!"

The subject comes from our good friend Efrain who has a backyard filled with birds. It's pretty much a zoo just with all these different types of birds, so we had to check it out. He was showing us some of the baby birds and then he showed us a little bird house with a ton of little eggs in there. As he was showing it to us, he had the biggest smile on his face and he dropped the one liner of the week. He really loves his birds, so I had to throw in a picture of him at work!

The highlight of the week was having a ton of the people we are teaching and some other non-members come to our ward Christmas party. The ward did a play as well with some acting and some songs, which was really interesting. A lot of the people that signed up didn't show up, so I subbed in last minute and had my acting career debut... I was one of the 7 Nephites and the play was just centered on the birth of Jesus Christ as told from the Book of Mormon. Super interesting

We were blessed to be able to teach Rafaela and Juvencio this week and they were one of the families that came to the Christmas party. They have been taught for a while by other missionaries, but haven't came to church yet, so the party was a good introduction for them to the ward members.

We taught a woman named Beatriz twice this week. She was someone that we taught at a dinner with a member, since she is the friend and lives with one of the Hermana's in our ward. She really wants to get baptized, so we put her on date for next weekend (assuming she would be able to come to church this last weekend), but she is super big into the swap meet/yard sale game, so we will need her to come to church. She has already seen a lot of miracles as we have been teaching her. We have felt prompted to stop by her a few different times and every time we stop by, she is usually having a really hard time with something, so she knows that God is sending us by to help her change her life around. When we taught her about the gift of the Holy Ghost and the roles of the Holy Ghost, she had so much desire to be baptized. She will be leaving for Mexico next week, so we are a little sad about that, but know she will progress even more when she gets back in January.

We had a cool service opportunity this week. We helped clean up after this 5K run and we saw these professional BMX riders because they were at the event as well, so cool stuff!

We had MLC (mission leader conference) this week and it was straight revelation. All the training's were on things that will help the mission a lot!

Tomorrow is our multi zone conference/ Christmas devotional!

I was able to finish up the Book of Mormon challenge this week and it just keeps getting better!

I've always just shared Moroni 10:4-5 when I talk about the promise that the prophet Moroni gave to everyone who reads the Book of Mormon. I just felt like it covered the whole thing pretty well, until I read it again this time around. I found out that verse 3 has an important step to the process of receiving answers from God.. Moroni talks about how we need to "ponder in our hearts" the love and mercy that God has for all of us. I took that as more than just a "one-time-event," because really I have found most of my answers as I continually ponder about all the spiritual things that I have learned. As we ponder about the doctrine we learn in the scriptures and from the Prophets and Apostles, God will send the Holy Ghost to comfort us and bring peace to our souls.

Elder Moon