HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 Hola,

I'm loving it here in Lakewood, and we are teaching some super cool people. Here's the scoop on a few of our people. Michael is waiting for his leg to heal so that he can get it wet. We are praying our guts out that he'll be good for January 23rd! 

Also, I can't believe it's already 2021! I honestly never thought this year would come. We're also teaching a guy named Oscar from Uganda! I like hearing about all the crazy witchcraft that goes on from where he's from! He is the most thoughtful and complicated person I have ever met. We had a lesson on Sunday with Sister Stacey in our ward and she was amazing! We were all just trying to understand why he says that his body and mind are ready to be baptized 100%, but his spirit isn't'. Super confusing, I know. He feels like he progresses the fastest when he waits for the Lord's timing, and he wants to know for sure for sure. We've explained how faith precedes the miracle, and that you don't need to know everything to him soooo many times. After we just took the time to try to understand him, we all felt a lot less frustrated and the spirit was really strong. We all feel like he'll be baptized really soon. 

We also started teaching two sisters from Nepal, named Suni and Pranisha! They are SO cute! The first lesson we had with them they asked the BEST questions ever. Like how can we get closer to Jesus Christ? What do we need to do to get the Holy Ghost, and why are there so many churches around here? The next time we taught them the restoration and they seemed to understand it really well! AND we keep getting tons of referrals, it's so crazy!!

This week was zone conference and we gave an awesome discussion on a new term for drop, it's called "marinate". At the mission leadership conference we felt like missionaries were hanging onto people who aren't progressing for too long. A lot of times we feel really bad letting people go because we can't see all of God's plan for them. Sometimes people just need a little time to simmer or marinate until they're ready to really let God prevail in their lives. It's really cool how letting people go actually grows our faith in two ways! 1.It helps us grow our faith that God will provide more people for us to teach who are prepared and 2. It helps us trust that these people are in God's hands, and that he'll redirect them to us, or direct us to them when the time is right. Marinate is a really weird word and it makes me think of cannibals sometimes, but there's just no better way to explain it lol! President and Sister Sorensen came to our discussion and said we did a super good job! 

Even though Sister Steed is brand new you would think she's been out forever! She's amazing! She finds a way to laugh about literally everything, and she says the most random things sometimes. It is really keeping our companionship lively! She shared a super cool experience during Oscar's lesson that I hope touched his heart. 

On new years eve our fire alarm went off at 10:15am! We were all so confused because it sounded like someone was outside banging pans and pots together, but after a little while we realized that we should probably go outside. Everyone took their most valuable possessions. Mine were my Book of Mormon and SNACKS hehe. Sister Shields took a video of me with my snacks and sent it to our whole district. Then someone made me into a gif. That was a first, lol. We also bought a bunch of that sparkling champagne stuff and kazoos for all of the sisters in our zone and drove around delivering it to them! They were all super excited and really enjoyed the surprise. Sister Shields is a major partier so we had a mini celebration before bed, and then she set an alarm for midnight and we could all woke up and blew our kazoos.

That's all for now! Bye Bye! 

Love, 

Sister Butler 

Chillin outside during the fire alarm 

My first gif 

New years celebration