Pictures:

• 1) eating my first Chicago Dog
• 2) this is from the Live Nativity that we had on Sunday. I guess they've been doing it for 20 years now! Our ward and the other ward in our building do it together, and people from all over the area come. It was REALLY awesome.
• 3) the Picture that Hailey Smith sent me and told me to color to look like myself. Please share this with them.

• 4) some of my Christmas decorations :)
• 5) our Christmas "tree" - it's the fireplace... and the best we could do.
• 6) the Chicago Dog.

The Christmas card: I can't believe you actually did it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hahahahahahahahah! I was cracking up when I opened it.

Thursday was our Zone Conference, and it wasn't super Christmas-y as Sister Brown had predicted, but it was still really good. Every ZC, President sends out an assignment to everyone for a 5 minute talk (all the same topic) and then at the conference a few people are asked to come up and give their talk. I was one of those chosen. Our assignment was 3 Nephi 5:13 about being a disciple of Christ. I focused on the last line that talks about how we do these things that they might have everlasting life. That line describes how selfless our calling as missionaries is, and how Sister Brown put in context for me the saying that "we're not here for ourselves". For some reason I was SUPER nervous the whole time I was speaking and I could hear my voice cracking and everything, but everyone said I did a really nice job, so that was comforting.

Exciting news relating to discoveries concerning my distant past: One of the Elders that meets in our same building is named Elder Hibbard. On Sunday we discovered that Katie Hibbard, the same Katie Hibbard who shares my birthday and was my best friend until I think I was 4? when they moved to Meridian, is his cousin. SMALL WORLD.

Yesterday we had two appointments in the same neighborhood (Don and Cierra) so we decided tha in between them, we would just keep working in that area. We've already done a bunch of it, so soon we'll have the whole section tracted out! It was not only convenient, but turned out to be inspired. We knocked on a door and this man, Jermaine, came outside. Sister Brown introduced herself, and I followed suit. Jermaine was SHOCKED. He told us that his god-father had just died a few days ago. His god-father's name was Robert Brown. And Robert Brown's best friend (and Pastor) was Pastor Hatch. None of us could believe it! I guess I shouldn't be surprised considering that the name Poplar is what led us to find Don and Rose, and Cierra. But I truly believe that Jermaine really needed a Hatch and a Brown yesterday to grab his attention so he would listen. We had a really good talk with him, and then Sister Brown asked him to read from the Book of Mormon in Moroni 10:3-5. He read that, and then he just kept reading for a while after that. I felt the Spirit so strongly and I could tell that he definitely did. It was really cool. We set up an appointment to meet with him next week.

After our appointment with Cierra yesterday, we saw that we had a voicemail. It was from Don, who had seen our car across the street. He told us to come over for a minute when we were done. We went over and Rose had just gotten home from work. She had brought us a poinsettia for Christmas! It was so sweet and so perfect! They were wanting to do something for us for Christmas, but they don't have much, so it turned out perfectly that she was able to bring one home from work to share with us. I also LOVE them of course. Well anything that has to do with Christmas really... Each week we make goals, and we decided to make a few fun goals this week and one of them was to Christmasify our apartment. I had already made a few snowflakes and a paper chain, but we thought the place could still use a bit more. And it's been awesome because people have just been giving us stuff this week! We got another Poinsettia from Sister Andrews later that night, and on Friday, a sweet old Philippino lady gave us some bells to hang on our door.

I love you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!