MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! from Peter

Hey hey. Whew I love this time of year. It was so good to hear from everyone and like you all mentioned, I'm looking forward to talking to you tomorrow! The other phone calls flew by in a blur so I'm hoping that tomorrow's will go by a little slower, ha. But it really fires me up to hear your happy voices and reminds me how lucky I am to be here and have family that is so loving and supporting.

We don't have much time today but I'll give you a quick update of what's been going on in this most wonderful time of year. Sunday was just miraculous. We had three investigators come to the latvian sacrament meeting—Rollands, Juris and Ilvars! Rollands is a super cool 18 year old kid who we've been teaching for the last two weeks. He lives with his family about 25 km from Riga, and he has 5 siblings who he looks after a lot. He studies in Riga so Elder Hatch and Elder Hansen taught him after meeting him on the streets while on an exchange. He's a really kind, humble kid, pretty shy but understands well and gives really good answers. He also speaks english well which is really helpful for our teaching situation. He really enjoyed church though and ended up staying for over 6 hours, for both Latvian and Russian blocks! I've never had an investigator do that before. We rarely do that, even though we always go to both sacraments, we'll take off if we don't have investigators in the classes. And 6 hours is a long time to be at church. But I'm really looking forward to continue to teach him and if things go as planned he'll be passing the sacrament at the end of the month! The branches here need good young priesthood holders pretty badly-- so he'll be a good addtion! Juris and Ilvars came unexpectedly, we'd invited both earlier on in the week but Juris is not completely interested and it's been hard to stay in touch with Ilvars because of his work schedule.But they came and that was good-- Ilvars especially has a testimony of the Book of Mormon and is also planning on being baptized in the middle of January. And then in Russian branch Vladimir came again and he's really getting it. He's traveling to Liepaja this week-end to be with family but he's coming back for sunday morning so that he can come to church! He also has a goal to be completely off smoking by Christmas (wow that's tomorrow!) and he's been smoke free the past three days. Oh man it's just a joy to teach people who are prepared and ready to change. We really continue to be blessed, and the best part about it is seeing people who start to repent and live commandments and see immediate blessings and increase of feeling the spirit. It works like clockwork everytime. Speaking of time we've only got about nine minutes! I'm way bad at writing short e-mails. Other week highlights are old missionaries leaving. My whole companionship misses Elder Brown—it's not the same without him. But he sent me an e-mail and seems to be doing well and apparent made his way to temple square to visit Sister Brett, haha. I hope her companions aren't sick of all these family/friend visitors. He said she was a very happy, awesome missionary, and asked him for a referral, and I was so proud. 6 new missionaries flew in yesterday, it's getting a lot warmer—above freezing, and it feels really warm actually. Tonight the Dances invited us for dinner with their family and the Senior missionaries, we'll be caroling to some investigators/members tomorrow as a district, go over to Katya's in the evening and then talk to you! Woo-hoo!

Sorry I didn't have time to write everyone back or give lots of details, but I'll fill you all in more on the flip side. Merry Christmas. I love you! And I just love being a missionary for Christ's church. It's so fun.

Love, Elder Barnes #12