Hello Everybody!

What a surprise!! I was not expecting to read about the first niece coming into the world this week! That is awesome! I am glad to hear that everything is good and Ash and Rachel are both doing good! That is a pretty neat Christmas present, she came a little early.

Well my new companions name is Elder Moncur, and he is from Lovell Wyoming which is kind of by Yellowstone. I love him; he is really awesome. He has a twin brother that is still in the MTC, he is going to Monterrey Mexico He is so humble and willing to learn. We had a pretty awesome first week together. When we got back from Farmington on Tuesday we went straight to work. We had appointment all that night, and we had some really good appointments. We met with Keosha and talked about baptism. We have to be careful with her because the missionaries before were really pushy with her and she felt uncomfortable. So we were talking about baptism, and she said that she sees herself getting baptised because it makes her happy when we come over and she comes from a pretty bad family situation so she likes being happy. As we were talking Mosiah 2:41 came to my mind. So i shared it and talked about working towards a baptism date. And when that happened she started crying and I though something bad had happened, but we talked with her friend that was there later and she told us how she just felt the spirit so strong and when we read the scripture she just new it was true. She knows it is true we are just having a hard time because her family is what is holding her back. They think she is becoming to white and just really give her a hard time. But we were excited to hear that and it gave us some ides on what to teach her. We also set a baptism date with Sean Murphy this week. He is really progressing on quiting smoking so we set a date for the 21 of January. We found some really awesome new investigators this week as well. One lady her name is Wahnonah has been going to church for the past three weeks and has been reading from the Book of Mormon every day. She couldn't be anymore prepared. The Lord is truly blessing us here in Blanding. We are working really hard and are seeing the blessings of our efforts.

This week we have our Christmas Zone Conference in Farmington. It will be on Thursday. It should be pretty fun. It will be four zones getting together. So that will be about half of the mission so that will be pretty cool. We are doing a white elephant gift exchange, so I need to find something ugly for that. So by the sounds of things I'm not sure if it's going to be more of a party or a zone conference. Either way it should be pretty fun!

Oh, I almost forgot. Calling next week....Plan on around one o'clock. So that will be two here. So I hope that works if it doesn't get a letter in the mail and let me know a better time. We have sacrament at 9 and 11. Well I look forward to getting to talk to everybody! I hope you all have a wonderful week! I love you all! Merry Christmas! May we all remember the true meaning of the season. We put together a little Christmas message last week to share with people. I can't wait till Sunday!!:) Talk to you soon!!!!!!!!!

Love,

Elder Schmidt

Elder Moncur, Elder Sharp and Elder Schmidt

 Elder Schmidt with Elder Moncur and their Christmas Tree 2011!!!