December 12, 2016

Week 42

Merhabalar Sevgili Ailem! (Hello,My Dear Family!)

It's good to hear it's snowing and nice & cold back home.  It's actually warmed up these past couple days, where all I have to wear is a suit. I definitely miss seeing the snow-capped Rockies. Mom, Kizkardes Rasmussen gave the packages to me and made me pinky promise her not to open them, so don't worry! She gives them to me periodically when we are at the church so I don't have to carry them at once allll the way back to my area. Dad, mom already sent me some music and I have a question for you: in the ward news letter, you said something about a third country opening up in our area...What the heck? Are you just blowing smoke or do you somehow know something that we volunteers don't? Because that's some pretty big news if it's true. This week I went on another unexpected 2 night exchange with Yasli Allen in Sisli. The next day Yasli Blair took the ACT for the BYU application and his comp Yasli Mazzei couldn't be alone. So, Yasli Nahle and I stayed with him in Levent for that day. We were able to meet with our Turkish friend three times this week! He won't be ready for Christmas eve, but will sure be by mid January. He's still doing great. Love that guy! We are also super stoked because we have an appointment with a woman this week! She is a self referral, don't worry, we aren't breaking the rules haha. This week, again, we weren't able to meet with our Nigerian friend. Our schedules just unfortunately didn't match up.  He still wants to meet though, and came to church yesterday! Due to the incident Saturday night (that I won't bring up because I'm sure you know about it) yesterday was the smallest number of attendees at church I've seen since I've been here.  It's kind of a bummer because we watched the First Presidency's Christmas devotional, which was really good. If you guys haven't watched it, I'd recommend it! Speaking of Christmas before I forget--since we have a ton of volunteers here in Istanbul and a small amount of computers, we still have to arrange a few things. We should know by next Monday, or I'll send a random email some time before Christmas to let you know. Just make sure to have your Skype accounts ready and shoot me your account names next week. I'm very stoked to see your faces!!! Volunteer Nahle's parents are going to Colorado for Christmas, so maybe you guys can meet up, who knows?! I love you guys!