Sister Kirsten Leslie: The Lord Is Hastening His Work!!!

Hooooly cow!! What a crazy end to the week!!!! We had a surprise stake meeting yesterday and they changed the ward boundaries and added TWO NEW WARDS into Casper!!! It was shocking!!! They absolutely murdered our beloved Casper 4th ward as we know it. It's now in 4 wards: 9th, 1st, 4th and 7th. So Sister Woodbury and I now live in 7th ward and all our investigators are in 7th ward so we are hoping and praying that we get placed in 7th ward!! Pray for us!! President Smathers, our stake president, gave us a nice little talk at the beginning about how change is good and how we need to embrace change. And adding 2 new wards to Casper is a GREAT thing because it means the Lord's work is hastening enough that we need 2 more wards!! So it's awesome!! No new chapels have been announced though, so for the moment we are going to have 4 wards in the Stake Center, 4 wards at the Poplar building, and 3 wards at the 7th and Missouri building. So that is crazy!! Our ward is pretty shocked about it and rightly so--they're just wanting to share the Casper 4th ward with everyone else because we are awesome!! haha. So we are still a bit in shock. To see what the new boundaries look like and everything, go to the online map at goo.gl/WLNJ9S and see our most beautiful Casper now with NINE wards!!! On this online map, it tells you what the ward is, where it meets and what time it meets. So here's all the details. How awesome is that! So we are so excited, but also heart broken because a lot of our beloved members are going into other wards. Luckily, the changes don't happen untilJanuary 1st so we still have one last Sunday in our great ward. :) Sister Woodbury and I are hoping to sing in it to thank the ward, but we will see!

Last Tuesday, we got to do some awesome service helping River of Life Ministries with a toy drive for needy first graders in Casper. The high school ROTC helped us and it was really fun! We each got a little kid to take around and help. Mine was named Hadley and she was SO cute!! All she wanted for Christmas was for her Dad to be there (he works in the oil fields it sounds like), and that just broke my heart. Every child should have their Dad there for Christmas!! But she was so cute. She told me I was one of her best friends. What a cutie! It's the simple things in life that really matter!

It was so sad, Sister Woodbury was sick for 2 days this week, so we just stayed inside for those 2 days except for the appointments we had. She's feeling a lot better, which is awesome because being a missionary stuck inside (whether you're sick or not) is really not exciting. There's only so many movies you can watch and things to do! Ha,ha. But we made it! And for the first time in a while, I got caught up in my journal! woohoo! That's always an exciting day. :)

We now have 4 investigators on date and we are pretty excited about it!! We put Danette and her daughter, Cheyenne, on for February. Pete's still on and Brooklyn is on for February. It feels great to be helping people come closer to Jesus Christ by helping them get to the gate of baptism. Tracy is SO close!!! She is doing really good. She was at church yesterday and she is doing great! Her husband is in town right now so it's fun to work with him too for the moment. :) Our investigators are AWESOME and all in 7th ward so we need to be in that ward!! We are going to fight for it!!!! Haha.

We handed out about 90 He is the Gift cards this week, we were so excited to be able to share it with that many people!! We do this awesome lunch project on Saturday mornings to help make lunches for homeless people, and we gave out a card in every lunch!! That was awesome! As long as it makes a difference to someone it's worth it!! Yep!! So it has been awesome week with that!!

I just love the members here in Casper so much!! They are really starting to love us back, too, just before we get split from some of them. :( Yesterday, we went to talk to a ward member about the new boundaries and a man in the ward hugged me (which isn;t allowed as a missionary, so...) it was a bit awkward but he's like an uncle or something. But still....We're going to miss the members SO much!! We're going to make the most of this next week and half.!! Oh yeah!!!

This morning, Sister Woodbury and I went to Eggington's, a breakfast place in downtown to get some Eggs Benedict since we won't be having a Christmas Eve breakfast. It was awesome!! We have now been companions for 5 months. That's pretty fun! I love serving the Lord with Sister Woodbury. :)

Merry Christmas, everyone! Remember the reason for the season!! He is the Gift!!

sister leslie.

p.s. talk to you soon, family!!!!