Hermana Rebecca Gifford Serves in Oregon: Wedding Bells / White Christmas

Hi everybody!

It was a rainy day here in Oregon. The streets are flooded and many houses are getting flooded as well. But that’s okay because guess what? It was a wonderful week! Oh man I feel like a million things happened this week.

Maria and Carlos are married! They did it. And Maria was baptized yesterday. We were planning on having a member decorate for the wedding but she canceled the beginning of last week. So Hermana Wilde and I were in charge of everything. Woo! Who knew missionaries were wedding planners as well. We scrambled begging for decorations from people all around the stake. Thank heavens people were willing to lend some stuff. It looked pretty nice for planning a whole wedding in one week.

The culture: Maria and Carlos were 45 minutes LATE to their own wedding…..and an hour late to their baptism! Haha! Ooh goodness I definitely had some nervous sweats going on there but they made it! The members were amazing in supporting them. President Thackeray, our Branch President, married them in the cultural hall. President and Sister Samuelian met Maria and Carlos a couple weeks ago so they came and supported them at the baptism. It was quite the weekend!

I am not sure if I have told you all about this yet, but our mission is doing something called a White Christmas. We may not be getting snow this Christmas but we want every companionship to have a baptism in the month of December. The White Christmas has come! But this is not the end. I know that we can get at least one more baptism this month. The Lord is preparing so many people here in McMinville.

Bad news: We are having a 5-week transfer due to Christmas (Next transfer will be 7 weeks). I am terrified that I am going to get transferred. This area is so amazing. But we shall see...I will keep you updated on that.

We had planned just doing one exchange with Sisters this week but we had Missionary Leadership Council. There, President Samuelian told us that we needed to do a power exchange with two different companionships. (A normal exchange is you split and go into different areas but a power exchange is where all four missionaries are in one area). So because of this I was only with Hermana Wilde 2 days this last week. It was wild. Get it ;) This week shouldn't be as crazy.

News with our other investigators: We still haven't seen Ana since Thanksgiving :( Baptism is still a go for Christopher and his little sister Kimberly. We weren't able to see Yoselin either. Because this week won't be so crazy hopefully we will be able to see all these people!

Well I better get going! Wasn't the First Presidency Christmas Devotional amazing? The Savior truly is the Light of the world. His light will overcome all darkness.

Love you all!

Hermana Gifford