Merry Christmas!

Hello! Merry Christmas from the MTC!

I'm sure you're all awake and looking at the amazing stuff under the tree- my roommates and I all woke up at 5:30 to open the gifts and packages we had received. I took some pictures- I taped my tree up from the ward and we put all of our presents under it. it was awesome. Then the tree fell down. Washi tape is not that wonderfully strong hahahahhaha.

Also, I appreciated the washi tape tree on the package- that was hilarious.

As far as my experience here is, it is absolutely wonderful. Yesterday our zone teachers sent some photos they took of our zone and of each companionship- I hope you got those! My companion is Sister Hindman. She's wonderful. (:

I love my zone so much- I can't remember if I've said this or not, but in the zone, we have missionaries going to New Jersey Morristown, Ohio Cincinnati, Massachusetts Boston, and Michigan Lansing missions. Even in the zone, there are only couple of us that aren't from Utah hahahahha.

The spirit is so wonderful and amazing here. I have felt it so much. We have been teaching investigators- teachers and volunteers role-playing as people they know or met on their mission and they never got baptized. It is quite an interesting experience- there is such a big difference in our first lesson to the ones we had yesterday. The learning curve is exponential.

I don't know if I told you this or not- I probably didn't- but on our second day here, Sister Hindman and I were walking to the MTC bookstore after lunch to look around. A brother stopped us, and asked us if we would go teach an investigator. it was a little nerve-wracking! we still had our dots on our name tags- our orange dots that said we were complete and total newbies to the MTC. We went in and talked to this investigator- her name was Breanna. She was a really cool person, and it was nice to get to know her. We haven't heard anything about that since, and anyone we ask is like "well, they sometimes do things like that and don't tell me about it so I have no idea." 

Sunday was absolutely wonderful - we had a devotional, and we watched a film. The speaker at the devotional was Brother Randall, he is a director in the Missionary department. The film we watched was incredible, it was called the "Character of Christ." It is a talk given to missionaries at Christmas a few years ago by Elder Bednar- it was absolutely fantastic. If you can find it, you should watch it.

Last night we heard from Elder Evans of the Seventy. He totally teased us and said I'm so excited for you to hear from elder... oh I shouldn't say his name- tomorrow. we all were like AHHH COME ON!!

I am out of time. I invite you to read 2 Nephi 31. It speaks of the Doctrine of Christ- something we have discussed much about in the last few days.

Love you and miss you so very very much.

I write again Saturday.

Love Always,

Sister Richmond

   *We did not yet received the e-mail with the pictures from her zone teachers. When we do, I will post them. Merry Christmas! Kristi