Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

Hello Family and Friends!

Happy Belated Thanksgiving! There was a Thanksgiving scripture that I really like. It is Alma 37: 36-37. I am so thankful for this gospel and for all the many blessings we have because Christ's true church has been restored on the earth and we can receive personal revelation as well as revelation through the prophets of God. I am so thankful for my family and all the love they have for me! 

We found an awesome new investigator this past week and I am so excited to teach her more! She will be an awesome missionary someday! The Spanish Elders (AMAZING!!-They've given us like 5 referrals this past week) gave us her as a referral to go visit her because she was interested. They found her by going to a potential investigators house who no longer lived there. But she is BOMB! She has been raised Catholic but doesn't agree with baptizing children as infants and in praying to saints and Mary and believes that Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are three separate individuals, just as we in the Church of Jesus Christ believe. It's so awesome! She's so excited about the gospel and sharing it with her mom who isn't quite ready to understand yet. But very soon, very soon! As well as her dad!! They'll all be sealed together for eternity in the temple! That was one of the things we talked a lot about. Was sealings and temples. She is so excited! We'll hopefully be able to go with her to the temple this Friday with the ward to the visitors center! There are a ton of awesome Christmas things going on there. It's so cool! 

Thanksgiving... Well we had a ward Turkey Bowl that members had said they had invited non-members and they would be there. However, when we got there it was mostly the men of the ward a few kids and no non-members. But we did some contacting around and that was good. I have district meetings on Thursdays so we had that then had dinner at the F's. A really awesome Polynesian family in the ward. We had such good food and lots of it! However, I missed our family traditions, especially candied yams! I love how we boil the yams, peal them, cut them into circles and fry them in brown sugar and butter and pour the extras on top!! So much better any other way to eat yams...unless its raw with homemade buttermilk ranch! But they had these really good orange rolls made from fresh oranges in their yard! Everyone here has citrus fruit trees in their yards it's so cool. And have you ever had a prisimon? They're not bad. We also went to dinner at Sister B.s. She works in the mission office. However, we got there late when everyone was finishing and leaving so we helped wash dishes and clean up. We also had pie at the Cs (a super nice couple in the ward! that do awesome fellowshipping!)

Fun California facts: 1) The ice cream trucks run all year round!!!! And they play Christmas music!  2) EVERYONE has a mustang!! okay not everyone but I swear I see like 20-50 mustangs per day (not exaggerating! I've tried to count but always loose count) 3) There are green parrots here that look really pretty but when they squawk they sound as if they are dying!!

I went on exchanges for the first time this week with Sister M. I came out here with her from the MTC. It was so much fun! It was a lot different working in Glendora than it is in Azusa. Especially since she and her companion Sister P whitewashed the area. It was good to learn more about missionary work and different techniques that she has as a missionary than I do and Sister S does. We were able to provide some service for a lady and help her out a lot and meet with a few of the Less-Actives in that area. We then went to find all the past potentials to see if we could find new investigators. One guy invited us in -there were other females in the house, his wife and daughters- and he talked with us and feed us turkey noodle soup but he's not that interested. But it was good! 

I love you all and I love the mission! Serving a mission is hard work. It is not easy. Everyone says it was hard and I just thought oh psh they just aren't having enough faith. Yeah no, have faith and be diligent and it's still hard. BUT it is amazing to watch how you are helping someone come closer to Christ and watching things click in their heads as you teach them! It is the BEST thing to watch someone become so excited about what they are learning. I love that!! 

Love,

Sister Celeste Riches