November 30, 2009--I'm SO glad Thanksgiving is OVER!

Hi everyone! How are each of you? I'm doing wonderful! This week has been great.

I'll start off with the most asked question: Thanksgiving. So you all know that I'm not the biggest Thanksgiving fan, and I really don't care for the dinner, but here that DID NOT matter! Of course, members invited us over, and President set a limit for 2 meals with members. I was like Okay, I can handle that. Awesome. I won't eat a ton at either home and so I won't be crazy stuffed by the end of the night, right? WRONG!!! We had the 2 families that we were going to go to, but then a part-member family invited us over and we talked to President and he said that would be a wonderful opportunity to share the gospel. Ugh! yeah, we had to go to THREE homes!!!!!!! The first home was a born and raised Cuban family. Gosh, they talk A LOT and there are like 3-4 different conversations going at one time! It was a little overwhelming. I just kept looking back and forth at the table between each converstations. Sheesh. Keep this in mind, we went to them at 2:00. They served us a little bit different meal: turkey breast slices, ham chops, chicken, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes (the BEST I've ever had in my life, and I hardly like them!), rice, salad (Olive Garden style), lard bread, and this really weird/not my favorite dessert, and a really yummy brand of ginger ale. It was like something peanut buttery and you wrap it in guda cheese. Needless to say I only had one. So I was pretty much stuffed to the brim! I was so sick because of course they're like "Eat, Eat!" At 4:00 we went to a Brazilian family's home. They had a more traditional style dinner, but still a little unusual. They had an actual turkey, chicken and rice with some red sauce, crab casserole (of course I didn't even try that!), potato salad, salad, some sort of vegetable concoction (I couldn't even attempt that because I was so full) and something else Brazilian that was at the end of the table. I didn't attempt that one either. I was on the verge of regurgitating my food. Haha sad and gross. And of course they had the famous Brazilian drink that Tom introduced to us that Dad likes. I don't remember it being so good at home...... Haha:) So the third house was at 6:00. Yes, 6 straight hours of stuffing our faces full. Oh my gosh. This was the only traditional meal of the day. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, yam, green beans, corn and Sprite!! Oh, and apple pie. I've never been so stuffed in my entire life and I'm already dreading next Thanksgiving!!! Oh gosh, don't make me think about it! We had a really good time at everyone's homes, but I couldn't think about food for like 24 hours after our last dinner, and of course another member took us out to dinner on Friday night to a fany Italian restaurant and ice cream after. Ugh. Food.

Okay, so I mentioned Rosie in my email to president and not Oliver or Alex. Here's the brief on them: Oliver, we met with him last Monday night and it went great. We've got this great member that has fellowshipped him so well! They have a lot in common and Oliver is going through a lot of the same things our member, Cesar went through. We asked him on Friday how his Thanksgivng was, he said good, and then we asked if we could meet with him on Friday or Saturday and haven't heard from him since. He wasn't at church either, so we don't know what is up with him. Alex, we'll probably drop him this week because he really doesn't want to live the Law of Chastity. If we hang on to him he probably won't go any where, but if we drop him Heavenly Father will bless us with new investigators that are ready to progress.

Rosie is a member referral. Carlos Iglesias (who's home was first on Thanksgiving) owns an air conditioning company (no HV here. Just AC! hahaha) went to fix her A/C one day. He's like the most amazing member missionay ever! He shares the gospel with each home that he goes to. He's wonderful. He invited her and she took him up on the offer. We've been teaching her and she's amazing. She's set for baptism next Saturday. She is so excited and so are we.

Oh, I have to tell you about this other "investigator" of ours, Uvidio (Oovideo). He's not an official investigator yet because he just likes to talk about himself, eat ice cream with us, and tell me how much he loves me. He's Romanian, therefore he loves blonde hair. Yeah, lucky me. No worries though, he's going to wait for me to get off my mission to marry me. Don't worry mom and dad, he's only 45!!!!!

I'm glad to hear you have had a wonderful week! I love you guys with all my heart and I'm glad you each had a good week! Have a wonderful week this week and enjoy the snow for me. 64 degrees the other morning just about froze our buns off!!! Haha

LOVE YOU!!!!

Love, Sister Denson:)

PS the other two pictures are of me teaching 2 of the Creole elders how to make rock/hard candy. The red head is Elder Hudson-the biggest goof, and the dark haired one is Elder Nelson. They're awesome Elders. And they know Creole! Cool huh! It's one crazy language!!!