Oh Little Town of San Jose...

Aloha Everyone!

This week has been amazing! I can't believe it's December and here starts my final full week as a full-time missionary in my area. Time seriously flies by. This has been such an amazing experience. But before I get too caught up with reminiscing (because I'll have the rest of my life to do that...hah) I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS WEEK! We have so many investigators that are just at the beginning of their journey closer to our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. And what better time than now... the time of the year that we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 

I have been thinking a lot lately about how wonderful it is to have the knowledge that we do that we have a Father in Heaven who knows us individually, who loves us unconditionally, and who wants us to succeed. So much so that He knew we were going to mess things up and He provided us with a glorious gift. Our Savior and His Atonement. We've had the great opportunity to share with many of the families we meet the video "He Is the Gift". I love it! It starts with the materialistic commercialized Christmas that we all participate in and then brings it to Christ and how He is the greatest gift we have ever and can ever receive. Well, when I was in high school, one of my math teacher's taught me to read word problems like an equation. The word "is" meant "=". With that in mind, He, meaning Christ, = the Gift. There's a part near the end of the video where it says, "Discover the Gift. Embrace the Gift." The invitation the video is making to all of us is simple, to discover Christ and to embrace Christ in our lives. What a beautiful invitation that is... 

One of my favorite scriptures is in Romans 8, it says, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creatures, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord...What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?"

Our Heavenly Father loved us so much that He gave a Savior to provide a way for us to be with Him forever. Who can be against us when we have that kind of love penetrating every aspect of our lives?

I know that our Heavenly Father loves us. I am so grateful for this Christmas season that we have to remember our Savior and I am so grateful for the sacrifice that He was willing to make for me and all of us! I love you all! I hope you have a wonderful week! I'll see you soon!

Love,

Sis. Ellis-Lui-Kwan

 Here's the beautiful video that Sis. Ellis mentioned above.  Enjoy it and remember to keep Christmas in your hearts all year long.  We are all so blessed because of our Savior!  Love to you all, Anela

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

Aloha my wonderful family and friends!

Wow. It is December! How fast time has gone by I can't even wrap my head around it! I can't believe that 2014 is almost over. This has been the fastest year of my life. This week was wonderful! We had a wonderful thanksgiving! We ate so much food. Oh my. It was great!

This week we also had a branch conference with the Samoan Branch. It was a huge party all weekend! Haha! But really though...it was also the one year mark of the branch and so everyone was so excited about it! We had a dinner the night before and it was like a full blown luau. Each auxiliary performed something and so did the missionaries! I got to dance a hula! Haha whoo! So I really did dance hula all the way to San Jose. Prophecy fulfilled. Ironic how Bro. Finau, the high counselor who spoke at my farewell talk mentioned that I would, and now I did! Coincidence..I think not! Haha. The Branch Conference was amazing. The Branch President spoke and so did Pres. Mella. It made me so grateful for the opportunity I have to work with them both. Both such great leaders who really love the work they do and love the people with whom they work. Just amazing!

But this week was really great! We had so much fun! A lot of our regular people were out of town or unavailable because of the holiday but it's okay because we were able to see others that we don't always get a chance to see! Pretty great! We're super excited for this week we have a new potential investigator that we're really excited about! I really hope it works out! She seems like she's going to be amazing! So much work to do! I love it!

Well, hope everyone has a great week! I love you all! Here's a picture of thanksgiving. All the food on that table...is not even the actual food. That was on another whole table. That stuff was like the amount we took home with us. Haha yeah...it's real life. My wonderful companion is the two from me on the left. 

Love,

Sis.Ellis-Lui-Kwan

Sis. Young Yen is is two from me on the left. : ) A VERY Happy Thanksgiving! : )

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