WHAT A WEEK. can you believe it's Christmas this week? I'm still having a hard time accepting that. what did we do last Christmas? I remember music playlists, walks in the snow with jams in my ears, dancing with tessbabe and bee, and home made pizzas. man. can't believe it's been a year already. can you guys? 
all the missionaries were invited to a very nice christmas breakfast at the senior couples house. elder and sister hodder from canada. it was the most white people food I've seen in so long! there was food I totally forgot even existed! like bacon! bacon, sausage, potatoes, french toast, maple syrup.....geeze! I was freaking out. the worst part is that I couldnt even eat hardly at all. I'm out of practice of eating white people food. but give me a plate of rice and some curry!
oh one more really really gooooooood food story that I don't think you guys will believe so that is why I see it worthy to include. my favorite meal in miri, hands down, is this little shack that has this huge grill that they grill up pig. every single part of pig. and they put it on kabobs, grill it up, and then bring it to you with mismatched plates filled with rice, and little dishes of "belacan" this homemade sauce stuff that is sometimes made with shrimp paste but this kind is just hot hot HOT chili. and I go through like four bowls of the belacan because it is so good. your lips literally tingle because it is so hot but it is so delicious. oh and cucumbers. so my favorite meal, pig, rice, chili, cucumbers. does that sound good? words don't even explain how delicious it is. and now I'm craving it all over. 
so I want to share a scripture that has been on my mind literally all week. gibbons gave it to me, so I can't take credit. but its in ezekial 36:26- "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh." first of all, I loved the imagery of that. I remembered the day I got to watch my first open heart surgery, and the womans heart was beating in her open chest cavity. I will never forget that moment, because I had never seen something so....I want to say beautiful. and thinking of this scripture, where you used to have a heart of stone. and through Christ, our hearts can be changed to a heart of flesh. and I do have a testimony of that. in the book of mormon a few times it talks about the people getting wicked and being "past feeling" and I can understand a little bit. past feeling, almost like your heart is stone. but when we pray for charity, when we remember Christ and follow his commandments, when we try our very best to love the people around us and ourselves, at least for me, I can feel my stone heart being changed to a heart of flesh. like the one pumping in the woman laying on the operating table. and I love that. a new heart of flesh. 
I will close with one of those big, mind opening experiences that I think are very special to missions only. I'm not really sure how I would have learned this lesson elsewhere. So we have this family of investigators, an entire family. a big family. and the head of the family is named Richard. he is amazing. his testimony and his families is so unbelievably strong. and their baptism is this saturday. the only problem, richard used to have a problem with smoking and drinking. we taught him the word of wisdom, and two weeks (the deadline) before his upcoming baptism, he said that he had completely stopped everything. and bore testimony that it was only because of Christ and because this is the right time, blah blah blah, that he was able to stop. problem though, everytime we meet him, I get this off feeling when asking if he is still following the word of wisdom. he always says he has no problems, but for whatever reason, I just always found it hard to believe him. well last night, we walk up to his house for our appointment, and there he is with his "boys", shirt off, beer cans in front of him, with a cig in his hand. I straight up saw him. only thing, he didn't see that I saw him. so when his friends said we were here, he immediately ran and jumped in the shower. a few minutes later he comes out, walks over, sits down with his family, like nothing ever happened. his family just immediately looks down, ashamed, they totally know that we know. so anyway, we sing, pray, start the lesson like normal. and we go around with everyone, asking them how they are doing with reading, praying, if they have questions, how the word of wisdom is, and we get to richard. rinet was scared to ask him, so I asked him. he looked at me, straight in the eyes, and said he had not been smoking or drinking for two weeks. and he was dead serious. it was one of those moments where the Spirit just constrained me, because I just looked at him and didn't say one thing. and he proceeded to continue and tell me over and over that he hadn't smoked, hadn't drank, he was so grateful that he was able to drop the bad habit, and that he was ready to be baptized. we had already explained that when we follow the commandments and the missionaries ask them about it, they aren't really answering the missionaries, they're answering to God. telling God. and after all of that, he still just looked at me and lied. in that moment of me just looking at him, devastated, listening to him explain all this and all that, my mind couldn't help but wonder if what I was feeling was like how our parents feel, or even God, when we lie. here is this man, that I just love. seriously, love. and I had so much faith in him! so much hope! and I see him smoking and drinking, and he just is lying to me! my heart seriously broke more than it has on my mission I think. so anyway. that was probably really confusing, but moral of the story. I understand a little better, the heartache a person can feel when someone they love tries to lie to them. it's devastating. and the even more devastating thing? all he has to do is be honest. be honest with us, with himself, with God, repent, and pick it back up and go again. but he's not doing that. 
and after that long sad story, I'm going to close with a quick Merry Christmas!! I hope it's freezing wherever you are:) I love you all.