Hello folks!

Well a belated Happy Thanksgiving to you all. We didn't do anything here for Thanksgiving on Thursday, but today we are having a feast. We have one Filipina housemate and so we want to give her Thanksgiving. However, there will be no turkey... they have turkeys here, but they are usually alive and they definitely don't sell them in stores. So we will be having a chicken. It's going to be a Filipino Thanksgiving to remember. I will send pictures next week with all the awesomeness. I hope you all had an awesome Thanksgiving and I hope you all ate yourselves sick for me! If any of you have any fun pictures send them my way, I love seeing American life!

So obviously it's only been a few days since I last wrote and I already updated about Sisters Conference. Well this last week was definitely not the best. They day after Sisters Conference, Sis. Stadler got a horrible fever and then on Friday I got some awesome stomach problems that kept us in for a few hours. So all in all, we didn't get a lot of time to work this week. But we also only have 2 investigators right now, so at least we were able to get to them and teach. Now things seem to be better and back to normal. Hopefully they stay that way. Pray for us to both have good health! We need all the help we can get!

We definitely had some sad news this week. When we came home from Sisters Conference we found that the kitten had died. I think you will remember the stories of the evil kitten that hissed at us all the time and ran like the wind whenever we even opened a door. Well in recent weeks he had started to get used to us and one day even walked into the house. Well we came home from our shopping and emailing on Wednesday and he was dead, sprawled out next to the storm drain. We don't know what happened. It could have been that he ate some permethrin (what we use to kill bugs) or that maybe he had drunk some water from the drain with bleach in it (we had just done laundry). We don't know, but now he is dead. We were pretty bummed. I went out back and dug him a grave. We put him in a Zesto box and had a little ceremony for him. It was sad, but also pretty funny. I will attach some pictures. But at least now we won't have to hear his incredibly annoying voice every morning as he whines for his mother. Thank goodness...

So things have been going well with our investigators. Ricky is progressing like mad. We had to go over the Word of Wisdom again with him. He slipped and had a cup of coffee. But we told him that one cup was okay as long as he stopped right then and didn't do it again. He understood, we taught him about what was more important and how he could access the atonement. He really seemed to get it. Hopefully he practices it now, otherwise we will have to postpone his baptism. But he eats up everything and loves coming to church. When he is baptized he is going to add wonderfully to the branch.

Erwin is progressing, just very slowly. He definitely has a stronger desire now then he had before. We can just see it in him. He doesn't make the same sarcastic jokes anymore, he takes things more seriously. Hopefully, although it will be a while I'm sure, he will be baptized. We have hope for him.

We are praying all the time for new investigators. This area is pretty hard and we aren't supposed to be tracting, so we are relying on our membership list for part-member families and on ward member referrals. Neither of those things have brought forth a lot of fruit, but we believe in the vision of our mission president and this is what he wants us to do. We have faith in him and his inspiration, so hopefully we will start to see greater harvest here. Pray for that too!

Well, that's all for this week. I love you all and hope you are excitedly gearing up for the holiday season. I know a lot of you are near Finals time and the rest of you are just ready for Christmas. Good luck with everything and let me know if you need any specific prayers. You know missionary prayers are pretty much golden. :) Love you all!

Sister Jackson

#1--The coffin, a Zesto drink box...
#2--The final resting place. A grave I dug with a rusty shovel
#3--After the grave was filled.
#4--The headstone... a piece of cardboard and some flowers.