It seriously looks like Disneyland!

Dearest family,

So where to start... life has been amazing and crazy and wonderful. Christmas lights start this week!! I am a bit nervous, but super excited as well :) The nativity room is all set up in our gallery- it's basically a mini festival of the nativity type of thing. The Christmas tree in the front entrance is being decorated as we speak! I love Christmas  There is just such a happy, excited spirit in the visitors center right now and in our area as well. We got our big old box of fliers to give to our ward mission leaders and everyone is just so excited about inviting their friends and neighbors. I wish we had a visitors center in Atlanta  When the Christmas season starts our schedule gets way out of order. We will be out at night till about 10 and then we will wake up after 7. Then after studies, we will literally only have about 2 hours some days in our area and then we go back to the VC. I love the Christmas lights! At night  

Sis. Hamstead with Vicki Thompson

So I had some lovely visitors this week! I can't remember their names, but they were an older couple that had eaten dinner with you guys a few weeks ago and papa teaches their grand daughter in seminary. Does that sound familiar? They were super sweet though and showed me pictures from when they ate with you guys. 

Ah Sister Shurtz and i had to do this big presentation this week for a group of ten (4 nonmembers) plus Elders, called the Armor of God. I was nervous because I had never done it before and Sister Shurtz was nervous because she said her presentation has only turned out good once. Ah! So we prayed. really REALLY hard, and it turned out to be great! It was actually really fun and Sister Shurtz said it was the best presentation she's done. Yay! In the presentation we read the scripture about the Armor of God, had them (father and son) put on the dress up armor of God suits that we had, and then we watched some cool Mormon messages to go along with it. So much fun :) I love my job haha So this week we took Jesus to a baptism! Well actually 2... we got the times wrong for the baptism we were taking him to so the first one he saw the last half and then the second baptism he saw the first half haha it was good though! He wants to be baptized so bad! Gosh he is just so precious! He like oozes innocence haha but his baptismal date still stands for December 1st! 

 Oh also, we contacted one of our referrals this week that came from a member- these are the absolute best, most solid referrals. If you ever feel impressed to invite a friend or refer them to the missionaries do not hesitate! The story of how Heather was referred to us is pretty cool. We went over to the Booth families home and made what is called a family mission plan with them. I will send you guys one. They are great and make missionary work so natural :) So Heather was one of the names they put down on the list and they decided that they were going to ask Heather if her daughter would want to come to primary. So they went and asked. Heather then told them that she has been interested in coming to church for quite a while and was just waiting for an invitation! There are prepared people out there. We just have to find them! So anyways Heather has now been coming to church for 2 weeks and Sister Shurtz and I went and met with her for the first time on Tuesday. She is the sweetest lady ever! We immediately bonded and she is so open to the gospel. She wants to change and she knows the gospel of Jesus Christ will help her to do this. It was so funny because she brought out this big stack of books that she has already read- including the Gospel Principles book, the Brigham Young manual, the Joseph F Smith manual, and she said she was working on the Joseph Smith one! haha so presh! We then of course asked her if she has read the Book of Mormon and she has not... so, we immediately redirected her attention to the most important, most influential and life changing book there is! And we asked her to read it. She is going to get baptized :) It's so funny earlier this week in my personal study I was reading in Jacob 4 and it talks about how the Jews despised the words of plainness and they sought for things they could not understand. That reminded me of the famous tale of Moses and when the people were bit by the serpents. To be saved all they had to do was look at the staff. Even though it was so simple, people wouldn't do it! It's the same with reading the Book of Mormon. Some people think that there has to be some huge grand blinking sign showing them the way, but that's not how God works. The people who get baptized are the ones that follow through on their commitments- they read the Book of Mormon and they pray to God to ask if it is true. So simple, but still some people just will not do it. It makes me really sad! But, maybe they will be prepared in the future. 

Anyways familia - life is great, I love being a missionary, and the work is continuing to move forward. I hope you guys have a wonderful Thanksgiving! Oh thank you thank you for the package!!! It made me soo happy :) I wore one of the new shirts yesterday and we put up all of the decorations :) For Thanksgiving we are going to the Beckstrands (visitors center directors) with another companionship  I am so excited! I will send you pictures of it next week! I haven't gotten my letter from the stake presidency yet, but I will let you know! Till next week!

Love love love,

Sister Hamstead

I was actually just thinkning about Grandpa Gary recently. I knew it had to be coming up soon. I miss him, but I really have felt his presence with me. I feel that I have this opportunity to serve my mission for him as well since he never had the opportunity to do so. It is quite comforting :) There is a less active old man that we meet with every week named jerry and he reminds me quite a bit of Grandpa as well. Also we drive past "Gary Street" a few times a week as well :)

ps every time I read Jacob I just imagine him sounding like papa haha So Jacob has a British accent. I think it's because the way Jacob writes just reminds me of the way papa talks about spiritual things :)