Christmas is coming up so soon

Happy Christmas and a Merry New Years! :)

How’s this week going? can you believe Christmas is coming up so soon?! I sure cant! definitely not ready for it yet! Even Chicago isn’t ready for it since we have to have snow that sticks. it snowed for the first time this year on Thursday and then it all melted away and now its just wet and rainy... don’t even know if we will being having snow for Christmas this year.

 But this week has been a good one yet again! god just keeps pouring in these blessings and i have loved every minute of it....:)

So on Friday Sotero finally got baptized! Which you know what’s really cool about the date that he was baptized? is that a year before on the same day is when my first baptism took place. :) Jose Gonzales. So yeah that was pretty sweet! but what could go wrong for this baptism you might ask? Seeing as how at every baptism I have ever had something ALWAYS happens.....this time...wellllllllll They needed a ride to get from where they live to the church seeing how they didn’t have any other way of getting to the church and they live about a good 30 40 minutes away from the church. we had the ride and everything all set up and our baptism was supposed to take place at 7....its 6.45 and still no sotero. try calling the ride and no one is answering and called Sotero and he’s still at his apt and its 6.45 just waiting for the ride to pick him up......and we cant get a hold of anyone. 7.30 and still no one. font filled people waiting. even the bishop isn’t there. well finally we find out that the ride we had set up couldn’t take him last minute cause they got stuck in traffic so then the bishop went to go get him but got lost and didn’t know his address and ladlalalalsdklsdfjklsdhgjlsg so good news is that he finally made it to the baptism! at 8 is when we got started. :) and sotero is now the newest member of the Aurora Ward. :)

 Next cool thing is that Luis is just the most amazing person ever! He is seriously so excited to be baptized and we taught him the restoration on Sunday and the spirit was there so strong and we asked him how he felt and he told us...."well. its like this big feeling that i don’t know how to explain. but its really good. just this good big feeling. and I think that Joseph Smith was a prophet."  We gave him a chapter to read on Saturday that was about 10 pages long and he had it done by Sunday and had read the chapter 2 times so he could understand it better. AND he told us on Sunday that he really wants to go on a mission when he can :)

Lessons learned this week:

1.)If your eyes get big and swollen it’s a good idea to go to the doctor.

So for the past couple of weeks my eyes have been acting super weird. and actually it’s not even my eyes...just the eyelids. and every morning i wake up and my eyelids are just so swollen and puffy and red and itchy and burning hot and SUPER dry...like my eyelids were cracking and flaking....thought it might be just allergies so I was taking allergy medicine and Benadryl at night and using allergy eye drops and nope nothing. So then Saturday morning I woke up and couldn’t open my eyes because they were so swollen and told Hermana brown that that was it. we were going to the doctor. went over to Walgreen’s and the doctor...oh man you should have seen her face when she saw mine. if you have ever seen the movie Hitch-when he has that allergic reaction to the fish and his face blows up--yeah that’s what mine looked like. like I had two black swollen eyes without the black part. and she pulled out her little medical book and had to look it up cause it was so weird for her. turns out you know how lucky i am? Well eczema runs in our family and apparently I’m lucky enough to get it on my eyelids. add that along with a staph infection and you get the look of hitch minus the makeup artists. So attached is a photo of one of the days with my eyelid but it is nothing in comparison to how they were the day i went to doctor. super bad. so i got some nasty antibiotics and am now putting a steroid cream on my eyelids twice a day and not permitted to wear makeup for the next two weeks...get to show of the natural beauty from within. :)

2.) Never let me know it’s your birthday and you have confetti:)

well it was Hermana Browns birthday on Monday and her mom sent her a package filled with balloons and happy birthday confetti....while Hermana brown was sleeping :) I quietly took those balloons and blew them all up. took some ribbon and hung them from the ceiling, made a happy birthday sign and then took all the confetti and put it everywhere. she was finding it in her pockets, her boots, her toothpaste, her scriptures, her preach my gospel, her planner, her camera case....everywhere she went HAPPY BIRTHDAY was slammed in her face:) Then Hermana Brown gets all grossy josey on anything to do with eyeballs...so what does she get as a present from me? 4 plastic blue eyeballs is right! oh  man it was funny. So I sure hope that it was a good day for her :)

3.) Letting people know you play a musical instrument is a badddddd idea. especially when you have zone conference and the people that were supposed to do the special musical number get sick with the flu. So Zone conference was on Thursday. i get a call Wednesday night at about 9:40pm from the assistant. Asking me what my favorite color is and why. and then what my favorite musical instrument to play is. well I only play one. oh yeah. you play the flute. would you be willing to play a special musical number for our zone conference tomorrow. I found you a flute :) so seeing as I was cleverly tricked into that conversation I ended up playing some primary Christmas songs with assistant rogers on the piano. it didn’t turn out so bad considering that I only had 1 hour to practice. :)

And yeah. that’s pretty much what happened this week! :) Well I’m really looking forward to talking to my family on Christmas :) yayy!

love you a ton!

paz y amor,

Hermana Maughan