Hey Everyone,

Merry Christmas in Two days! I am so excited to be able to Skype home on Wednesday! 

This past week has been crazy and this up coming week will be just as much so. This past week on Thursday we had Our Multi-Zone conference with the Riverside, Mount Rubidoux, and Moreno Valley Zones, in Moreno Valley, so we were in charge of putting it on. The conference was very good. We focused a lot on finding, and Teaching simply. I really enjoyed it it was a lot of fun. Elder Kirkland took some of the Finding ideas that we discussed in the conference and used them, and came up with a list of 40 people to go see that we could potentially teach that could be Part Member Families. So far every one of the people we have visited have been a Part Member Family, so it is good and we have a lot of work to do and we are staying busy. 

That Night we had a lesson with the Holmes family who we have been teaching a lot, and It was probably the most powerful lesson that I have been a part of teaching, we taught first Faith, and then we talked about Baptism, and Peter, the Dad, asked us why we push so much for baptism, and for a date? My reply to him was that it is a commandment, but also that I wanted him to be sealed to his family for time and all eternity, I told him that one thing that I learned from Elder Reed, was that we should share what we love the most about the gospel, and for me as for most people it is the fact that My family can be together forever. That hit him really hard, but then we talked to him about quitting smoking, and he said it was hard to quit, and that he was able to quit more serious drugs because he could see it hurting his family, but smoking was just hurting himself. I then told him something that I had been contemplating for weeks, I said through tears "Peter, are you really going to let cigarettes stop you from having an eternal family, isn't that stupid?" Peter almost broke down crying, and he committed to make the change to stop smoking. It was one of the most powerful experiences that I have ever had on my mission thus far, and It is the only time that I can remember crying in a lesson.

I hope that everyone is doing well and that everyone has a Merry Christmas

Elder Bangerter
**We were able to talk to Andrew yesterday on Skype for about 45 minutes.  It was great!  He is doing really well and is happy.  We hooked up the computer to the television so we could all see and talk to him at once.  It was great! **