Snow Girls!

Dear Family,

Holy Cow! Sophie's hair is short! Does she like it? I do. I miss my short hair sometimes. I'll probably get a haircut soon but I can't decide how much to cut off. Maybe just an A-line to my chin. Thanks for sending the pictures. I think for the first time I see the resemblance between her and Will. A lot of the Sisters here (I showed them the picture) say Sophie looks just like me ("a mini Sister Mortensen!"). I guess we are all siblings after all! Ha ha!

Family, you should look at the new mormon.org. We, even as missionaries, are supposed to spend about an hour on there every week so that we can invite people to watch certain videos or read certain pages. So, I thought I should invite you to look at it as well. Then you can share it with your friends. You can even make a profile. I think it's neat to read everyone's conversion stories. Oddly enough, we ran into Zach Christensen's profile last week. I was like, "Wait a minute ... I know him!" Naturally Sister Kusnerik asked how, so I had to answer that we had dated at BYU. Ever since then she has been teasing me about what a great guy he is. She loves teasing me.

So, we didn't get to spend much time in our area this week (only about 2 days) due to snow and serving in the Trail Center. Instead, we shoveled a lot of driveways in Florence. Sisters Minert and Itri (our roommates) came with us so we were like the four Musketeers tromping around Florence with our boots, huge coats, and shovels across our shoulders. It was a lot of fun. Those long driveways went by a whole lot faster with four of us, singing EFY or girls camp songs as we worked. Incredibly, I didn't get that sore. The other fun part was seeing how grateful everyone was for the help. Some even gave us gifts. We got some kolache (a german dessert/snack), a nice card addressed to the "Snow Girls", and the best hot chocolate I've ever tasted. I don't even like hot chocolate but I had two mugs full of this stuff. It was good!

I think Heidi is our miracle new investigator. Just before Christmas, we were walking outside an apartment complex when she and her 10 year old son came out and started scraping ice off their car. We took off our name tags (they are very good ice scrapers) and helped them out. We asked if she was excited for Christmas and she almost burst into tears. Her father had committed suicide just two days before and she was trying not to think about it. We expressed our concern and asked to come back. A few days later, she let us in and we were able to listen to and comfort her and share more about the Atonement and the restored gospel. Ever since then, she has been reading the Book of Mormon. When we invited her to be baptized she said she's not ready to set a baptismal date because she feels good about her previous baptism. But she really wants to study this out for herself to see if what we teach is true. Tonight we will follow up to see how she felt as she prayed about the Book of Mormon.

Jesus is also doing very well. He hasn't come to church yet, so we'll have to push his baptismal date back (probably to Feb 12). He is coming on a church tour on Thursday and to the Trail Center on Friday to watch the Joseph Smith movie. He has really noticed an improvement in his life since he started meeting with us. In fact, he got after us the other day for not calling him every day. It's really exciting when people want to have us over all the time. It shows that they feel the spirit that we bring and want to have it with them. We are very excited for him.

Well family, I love you lots. I pray for you every day. Keep living the gospel!

Love,
Sister Bailey Mortensen