Well...it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas...2 weeks late. Thank you Michigan. Someone showed me a picture yesterday of a stick figure saying "The wind hurts my face...why am I living in a place where the wind hurts my face..." I second that! The wind is so harsh! We decided that even though it was sooo cold outside we were going to go PCing so we walked outside and by the time we got up to Owen Hall we were both saying "ow" "oh that hurts..." "alright...yep this is painful..." It was sooo painful and cold...

ANYWAYS...enough about the weather...

RAMYA GOT BAPTIZED! She was the happiest person I have ever met! She was soo happy and her baptism was absolutely WONDERFUL! The spirit was soo strong! She is going to be an amazing member! She is the sweetest person I have ever met! She is already making sure that when she goes back to India there will be a church she can attend! The Bishop always does a welcome to the ward and this one he just bore testimony of how she would touch the lives of many others! She has already introduced like 3 of her friends to the church! :) we talked yesterday about how she can teach her future family this and how it will affect generations! She is amazing....she said the first time she had ever hugged someone was the sister missionaries!

MARTIN IS GETTING BAPTIZED THIS WEEK! :) So he was going to get baptized December 27th and then he had to go back to China for some reason but in the end he came back and we had a lesson and he said "I want to get baptized...tomorrow...." haha well we explained that it probably won't be until the 10th but that it will happen! :) So yay! He is soo excited! Martin is the BEST! :)

KYLE IS COMING BACK TOMORROW! Haha I have literally counted down the days until he comes back! We have e-mailed a little while he was in China! But he is doing so good! He was going to share the Book of Mormon with his family!

WE MET XIAOLU! She is the most beautiful Chinese girl I have ever met! She is soo cute! And we met with her every single day this week! She doesn't have any background about God so we are starting at the basics! We want to introduce Kyle to her because before we met Kyle he didn't have a belief in God either! Xiaolu is amazing though! She is 23 and getting her PhD right now in material science...she is very smart! We had fasting and testimony meeting yesterday and at the end she said I want that peace that all of you guys describe! I want to know that God is there so bad! So we will continue to work with that desire.

WE MET GRACE! Grace is from China and so amazing also! She was friends with Bruce, one of the recent converts and he shared a bit of the Book of Mormon with her and how it came to be and she wasn't really interested! She we were PCing on campus one day and we looked down one way and there was nobody and we looked down the other way and there was one person...so we completely switched ways and we met Grace! It is sad...a lot of Chinese students when they come to America feel very lonely so when we teach them how God is our loving Father in Heaven they get really excited! Grace plays the guitar and is sooo cool!

WE MET XINJIE. (pronounced shin-jee) So going back to the story I told about the COLD COLD weather earlier! So we stopped at Owen Hall....Chris lives at Owen Hall...we text Chris...he tells us that he is not letting us go outside...he says he will find someone for us to teach so we can't go outside...and then he texts is friend and his friend is AWESOME! Xinjie is 30 and so so nice! I can't remember what he is studying but he never wanted to meet with us before because he thought his english was bad but he gets there and his English was AWESOME!

THENNN (the miracles do no cease...) WE WENT TO A SEVENTH DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH! Okay...so that is not the exciting part I guess...really it made me want to throw up and teach everyone the Plan of Salvation.The doctrine in someways is really close but they really need the Book of Mormon....and modern revelation. So I will try and make this story short.We received a paper of all the referrals through out the year that we had recieve and that hadn't been contacted and we decided to call Jinjin! Cutest little Chinese girl! Well her friend invited her to the Seventh Day Adventist church and since we called talking about church I think she got confused and told us just to come with us...it was rather confusing and somehow just came to be. So here we are Sister Roger, Jinjin and I sitting at the SDA church this being the first time for all of us. So we go through out the 3 hour long service...which kind of panicked me because I didn't think it was a good use of time BUT we go to the lunch in after and we get stuck at the "NEW PEOPLE TABLE" (literally they had a table for everyone that was new) with a Korean family! Cutest Korean family ever! The Dad is studying at MSU and the Mom is a famous concert pianist and a famous piano teacher in Korea! her husband said everyone she teaches...wins...hahaha! Her husband had asked a little bit about our name tags and said that he had seen missionaries before but never had a chance to talk to them! Well long story short the mom was having a hard time with English and after we were talking to her about how she was having a hard time in America and she looked like she was about to tear up it was soo sad! We talked with her for a while and we switched phone numbers told her a little bit of what we did (we didn't want to really "proselyte" in the church...but we really did anyways...oops) She text us later that day say that she had a very good impression of us and would like to meet us! So we are going to meet with her and her family later this week! I was sooo happy I could hardly contain myself! There was a reason that we suddenly got gently pushed to go to that church...it was weird how it all of the sudden just kind of happened and now she wants to come to our church! :)

I just realized that Heavenly Father guides you step by step...that experience really was by small and simple things it just happened and we alll of the sudden ended up sitting next to someone (at the awkward new person table) that needed to hear the gospel! I am amzing over and over and over again how God is such a miracle worker! I know that he is there. Things just don't happen like that! God's hand is in every part of everyones life. Whether they recognize it or not! He loves every single one of us and I know that with all my heart! I love my Heavenly Father!

Much Michigan Love,

Sister Oswald

1. RAMYA'S BAPTISM! She looked beautiful! My Indian Dress that Ramya helped me pick out!

2. RAMYA'S BAPTISM AGAIN!

3. Ghetto downtown of Lansing makes for great pictures.