Merry Christmas!

Hello everybody!!! 

It has been an amazing last week because of Christmas and having the chance to be able to see my family!!  I was able to skype them at the home of a less active (for 8 years!) that we have been working with and we are almost at the point that we can say that he is fully active!!  He is so amazing and has such a strong testimony of the gospel and he has been coming very regularly to church, he just had got distracted among the years.  And then he was so kind to let us come over to his house on christmas day and to give us a slovene dinner!!  He is so awesome! :D  

For the rest of christmas day we were at the Senior Couples home in Celje and the Elders and Sisters from Maribor stayed the day with us and we just relaxed and played board games, pretty dang awesome, because it reminded me of basically what I would do with my family for christmas. (besides the fact that I had to wear a shirt and tie instead of pajamas all day, haha!)

I hoped you all had an amazing christmas day with all of your families!!  That is definitely something that I have noticed so much while being on my mission is how special family is and how the gospel really does bless peoples lives!  All I can say is to love every second you have with your family! :)

For this week it has been a little slow, because of the holiday, but it is still going great! We have been seeing amazing improvements with one of our investigators and we are becoming very excited for him.  This past week we have had about 3 lessons with him and all with members present.  The lessons are always good and he always enjoys them and always HE notices the spirit.  In almost every single time we have met with him, he has noticed the Holy Ghost and he has mentioned this good feeling that he has all the time here in the church.  That was actually one of the first things he mentioned when we had contact with him.  He came for english class and we went on a tour of the church and at the end of the tour the spirit was so strong and he said out loud: "There is a really good peaceful energy here" and he has held onto that always.  We have told him that it is the Holy Ghost and we have taught him that it testifies of God and truth and that is something that he really liked.  Just in our last lesson he told us that he believes in truth and then he believes in pure truth and he totally agreed with us when we told him that the Holy Ghost will teach/testify of that "pure truth".  Also with our last lesson with him we went in expecting to tach about the 3rd lesson, but as soon as we got in he started asking us about questions from the Plan of Salvation, like: where do we go after this life and why do we have trials.  He told us that his Mom has been bed ridden for a long time and she asked why this happened to her.  We instantly switched to the Plan of Salvation and he loved it!!  He agreed with everything and then at the end of the lesson he prayed and told us how much of the spirit he was feeling and how amazing it was!! :)  We are really excited and he is coming along very well.  He also came to family home evening last week and he brought refreshments without even being asked! :)

We then are making great progress with another investigator that we have and at our last lesson she really started to notice the Holy Ghost.  We talked about it alot with here last time and that she said she always has this great feeling with us and is so happy.  At the end of the lesson she also prayed and asked to have this feeling stay with her.  We told her that it is a gift from God and we plan on teaching the 3rd lesson with her next time and put a lot of focus in the Gift of the Holy Ghost from baptism.  We still haven't have been able to have a lot of contact with her family, but her husband likes us and he is completely fine with staying for lessons, the only problem is that he has a really difficult work schedule.  Then her two sons have not been very interested, but she told us that they always ask "When are those two guys coming back again?" and they have really started to become use to us that it is almost a routine and they really like us, and now we are going to start trying a lot harder to get them involved and we are bring a Book of Mormon Stories next time, which is tonight!! :) 

I hope that you all will have a great week and Happy New Year!!  - That is another thing here in Slovenia.  New Years Eve is I guess one of the biggest (if not biggest) holiday here and they go crazy!! They have already been shooting fireworks for the past couple of weeks and this last week there have been lots every day.  My companion Elder Benson still tells met to "just wait", and that New Years Eve is insane, and I pretty much expect it to sound like a warzone with how it is already like now.  I'll keep you all posted!! 

Love you all and remeber to enjoy every day and if you ever are having a hard time, kneel, and I promise it will get better.  That is something that I can definitely testify to that when you need the strength, a simple prayer is all you need.  "When life gets to difficult to stand, kneel"  I have been baffled with the results, and I know God is watching over us and is wanting to help us if we only ask. :)

- Starešina Lyman!

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A little bit of christmas from Slovenia!  I got Pajamas and Mocassins!! (That is not how you spell that...)  Haha the funny thing is that my family sent me mocassins and then I sent them these special slippers from Slovenia called "Copati", haha!  I don't know how to say mocassins in Slovenian, so I have just been telling people I got "Indajski Copati! (Indian Copati)

More Christmas shops! :)

"Fairy Land" :)

More giant pine trees everywhere!! Merry Christmas!! :D