Colorado to Kingston : O Holy Night

Merry Christmas everyone!!! I hope you all have the best Christmas you've ever had :)

This week we spent a lot of time getting in the Christmas spirit... by sharing the gift of Jesus Christ with everyone we met! We've been participating in the church wide He is the Gift initiative... handing out at least ten pass along cards every day and inviting people to learn more about our message! We've been so blessed for our efforts. We find so many amazing people to work with, and I'm so excited to see what happens with all of them as we go along!

I had a couple of pretty awesome experiences this week as a result of the initiative. First of all, one morning all of our appointments fell through so we decided to walk a community near one of the member's houses to see if we could build up a new teaching pool. We talked to this one lady who wasn't really interested, but then later on in the morning we circled back by her yard on the way to our truck and she called out to us and introduced us to her friend. Her friend seemed way interested.. but the cool part was the part where we were explaining our message to her. I was testifying of the message of the Restoration and it was the most powerful contacting experience I've ever had. I don't think a single thought that came to my head was my own... pure inspiration. I don't know if she felt anything special, but I've never felt the Spirit so strong outside of the temple before in my life. It was amazing... there's something special about her, I can tell. And I can't wait to keep working with her!

Another experience I had this week was that same morning. We were walking down this street, and all of the sudden I felt the strongest prompting to go down a little lane off the side of the road. We started to walk down, and I had another insanely strong prompting to go up to this house... so we walked up to the veranda, and there was a guy sitting on the porch. We talked to him for a little bit, but he wasn't interested so we left him with a pass along card and went on our way. It was one of those times when you wonder why you were prompted to do something because it doesn't seem like you saw any results. But I know that I was prompted for a reason and who knows? Somehow, sometime down the line the guy could be baptized. Only time will tell.

We did service this week! Everyone paints their houses every year at Christmas time, so we got to spend a lot of time in paint clothes painting houses :) I love painting!

We had our ward Christmas party on Saturday and it was a blast! Tons of funny skits and songs and delicious food galore! I love Christmas in Jamaica :)

Sunday was Sister Walker's birthday, so we had church and then a delicious meal appointment courtesy of one of our investigators. Then we broke every rule in the book by picking up the elders in our truck and leaving our area. Hahahah just kidding we had permission to drive them and we had to drive to Spanish Town for the Stake Christmas Cantata! (Like a Christmas concert thing.) It was a mini road trip. We rocked out to Christmas music, got super lost and ended up in a really sketch part of town, and eventually got to the church twenty minutes after the program was supposed to start. Luckily, nothing starts on time here so we didn't miss anything haha :)

This week is Christmas! I'm so excited :) Serving a mission at Christmas time is amazing because I'm so much more focused on the Savior than I was at home. This Christmas I've really just been thinking about how much the gift of the Savior means to me! I'm so grateful that Heavenly Father loves us enough to send His Son to die for all of us! Let's all make sure we take time to remember the gift of Jesus Christ this Christmas. (And check out the video at christmas.mormon.org!)

I love you all! Have a very Merry Christmas :)

xoxoxoxoxo,

Sister Oman

Odeen

Sister Walker and I

The Beach by our house!

The sign says Merry Christmas, you can't really see it though haha. But this is the beach by our house!

These pictures turned out dark, but I was trying to show you how close we are to Kingston in Portmore... those mountains with houses on them are a suburb of Kingston.