December 13th, 2015

Hey hey heyyyyyy!!!! It has been such a crazy week and so many awesome things happened! Hopefully I can remember them all!

First things first, I am having a BABYYY!!!!!!! In missionary lingo that means that I will be training a new missionary!! I will be picking her up on Thursday, but I am a little nervous because since Sister Chatman is going home in the middle of a transfer we will be put in a trio, in Bay City still. So one of my companions is going to be extremely emotional because she doesn't want to go home and my other companion is going to be extremely emotional because she will be wanting to go home..  I'll be stuck in the middle just happy to be here, so pray for me--It's going to be an interesting 2 weeks!

Monday we went to Frankenmuth again, and it was super fun! I even remembered to take pictures outside the car this time :) Of course we had to go to Bronners, the biggest Christmas store in the world, and of course I had to buy an ornament. I'm debating whether or not I want to risk sending it home or not...  Dad you work at UPS do you think it will break??  It's really FINE glass.

All week we had tons and tons of lessons! The two families we are teaching right now are keeping us really busy and I love it. I'm sooooo Happy that I will be staying in Bay City for another 2 transfers so that I can really help them start to progress and HOPEFULLY be baptized!  Pita and Donny Cruz ( family #1) requested our help to paint their kitchen. We have spent a couple of hours there throughout the week having really good gospel talks with them. Pita has a hard time understanding deep doctrine (to her, everything religious is deep doctrine) so we had to break it down to her level.  Amazingly enough, the Twilight book series came in clutch this week. We related the Nephites and the Lamanites to the wolves and the vampires and she got it instantly.  Thank you Stephanie Meyer, pretty sure she is Mormon too...so maybe she got her story from the book of Mormon??

(Stretch....)  Jessica and Mike (family #2) are really progressing as well. They have come to church as a family 3 weeks in a row now!  Yesterday she did not want to come, but I guilt tripped her into it because she had to hear me give my talk! <---- I will talk about that later.  All was going well until their baby boy Isaak had to go to nursery.  Now this is a big baby. He is 18 months and weighs 45 lbs! To put it into perspective, his 8 year old brother weighs 48 lbs! Sister Chatman and I really wanted Jessica and Mike to attend Gospel principles class so we offered to watch Isaak in nursery so that he had a familiar face with him. Holy cow, he cried and cried and CRIEDDDD!!! I kept having to pick him up and now my arms are SO SORE!  It's so embarrassing, but it was basically like picking up a 45 lb weight plate over and over again. The things we do for investigators...

On Friday we had our ward Christmas party which was a total hit. So many less actives come out of hiding for ward functions. You would think we would have something every week they could attend... on Sunday...I don't get it. But I love them. The primary chorister (sister Klopf) had a baby on Thursday, so Friday morning she called sister Chatman and I and told us we were in charge of putting on the primary Christmas program. Of course we agreed because no matter what missionaries MUST agree to all things. Sister Klopf walked us through the program over the phone and that was that. When it came time to put on the program we called all the primary kids into the relief society room to get them dressed in nativity costumes. This is what was SUPPOSED to happen:

There were certain older primary kids previously selected to play the small parts in the nativity, I think there were like 10 kids total and they knew who they were. While singing the nativity song they were supposed to walk up to this tiny handmade stage while the rest of the kids kept singing. It was going to be great. 

This is what REALLY happened:

We dressed all the kids up and costumes were scarce so we just started making all the kids shepherds because shepherd outfits are pretty simple to make up on the spot. While we were in the middle of the nativity song the older kids were doing their job and going up on stage.  Then the verse came about the shepherds, and while leading the music I said, "Okay shepherds, your turn." only talking to the selected older kids.  But when the rest of the little kids heard me say that, literally the entire primary started storming the small handmade stage! I didn't know what to do so of course I started laughing because it looked so hilarious! All these tiny kids pushing and shoving to find space of the stage. No one was singing anymore and all the parents were just dying, "What kind of nativity is this?" "Who invited all the shepherds?"  It was getting pretty, ugly so the bishop decided to bring Santa in at that time to get all the kids attention on something else. Hahaha!  Good memory though.

This is really long... Sorry, hopefully not too boring! Enjoy your week! You are never going to believe this, but I woke up this morning to 60 degree weather! I went running in shorts and a short sleeve shirt. WHERE IS WINTER!?!??!

Love you all!!

Sister Viehweg

With Sister Chapman

Sister Package

Baby Isack

Kathy

Frankenmuth