I love the title of your email this week!!  Yeah its hokey, but I love it!  ;)  And in advance, I would like to apologize for how all over the place this email is!

Anyway!  I haven't really been able to talk with Pres. Anderson about being related to Jens Christian Andersen...  Its hard because generally when I do see him, its not for very long and there are other things that need to be discussed, but I'm hoping to find the time to ask him about it!  :)

Okay, and as for Christmas Carol, you're right, you did hear me laughing!  That is SOO funny!!  And that really is so cool how many generations there are involved!!  And who knows?  Maybe Mac or I will have munchkins of our own to continue our own family legacy...  ;)

And thank you SO much for telling me about Bryn!!!!  I wondered how she liked the letter and it makes me a little misty to think about her.  I'm hoping to actually write up a letter for her today, so Scott and Traci don't have to be worried at all about Bryn getting letters!  ;)  I love her so much, so please whenever you get the chance, give her hugs for me, since if I were there, I would be hugging that sweet girl every chance I had!!  And I'm so glad to hear that Traci may be seeing her full potential!!  :D

And not to worry about Mac not emailing me, it gives me another excuse to call him a punk!  ;)  And I'm so glad to hear that he finally gave a talk in Sacrament!!  :D  And that it went so well!  I can just see him writing out the bullet points and then going a little blank, but making the very most of it!  :) And that is super scary to think of him at your eye level!!!  If he keeps growing this steadily, he's not going to be quite so much of my "little" man when I get back...  CRAZY!!  O_o

And I'm so excited that you were able to have the missionaries over!!  :D  And that's crazy that they shared a message about the stripling warriors because we shared a message yesterday about the warriors and when we talked about how they doubted not that their mothers' knew it, I couldn't help but think of you...  :)

And Dad's right, I totally just squealed for Denice being the Stake YW Camp Director!  Although funny thought, at first all I saw was Stake YW Camp Director so I thought that YOU had been called to that!  Yeah, it was a funny picture that popped into my head...  ;)

As for Yvette and Schuyler, I do have their address actually!  But I don't have it on me, so I 'll send it in the actual letter that I'm sending off to you today...  (Yup, you get an email AND a letter!)  And for Carol Griffin, I'm friends with her on FB and you could just ask her through my FB account.  And actually...  I don't have Daniel's proper email and I've tried every combination I can think of so if you could please ask her on FB for me, that would fantastic!!

Thank you for the package!  My coat fits perfectly and should be plenty warm.  And BIG thank you for sending so many of my hats!  :D  I'm so excited for when it gets cold enough for me to wear them now!!  Also, thanks for the gloves, those will come in super handy!  (Haha, handy, see what I did there)  And wool socks (no matter the length) would be greatly appreciated.  But don't worry too much about your little chick, its going to get cold, but I'll handle it!  I lived in Logan where they've already gotten snow (so I'm told)!  ;)

The zone activity last week was SO much fun!  I wish we would have been able to get down there sooner but we had so much to do that we only made it for one out of the three hours that it was going on...  And it was super rainy so we were playing in the gym and we played "volleyball" (their version of volleyball was basically just hit the ball but it was fun) and Can Jam which is pretty much indoor ultimate frisbee.  It was so much fun!!  And one of the sisters in my zone is actually from my old YSA ward up in Logan!!  Crazy right?!  But I guess we must be related because I don't think anyone expected me to be as athletic/into the game of Can Jam, I actually even shocked Sis Oveson!  ;)

And thank you for the prayers!  They are much needed right now...  Over the last week, we've had every single one of our investigators drop, including Jake, the young man who had a baptismal date.  So we're pretty much starting from scratch.  With that being said, this week was very difficult.  In all honesty, it was probably one of the hardest weeks of my life.  But thankfully, the Lord has provided me with the best companion who had a nice long talk with me about continuing to push on.  It also was very interesting to me to look back through my notes from Conference and see all the revelation I'd received about enduring to the end.  The Lord works in mysterious ways, but He knows me and knows exactly what I need and when I need it.  So for now, as Debby said, I may just be planting seeds in this area, but I'm doing the Lord's work and am being blessed for it.

And this week hasn't been all bad!  On Wed. we had exchanges with the other set of sisters from our district and originally Sister Adams (the senior companion from Wilkes-Barre) was supposed to come up to Montrose with me and Sister Oveson was going down to Wilkes-Barre to pair up with Sister Suckow.  And I was really excited about it but was wishing a little that Sister Suckow could come up to Montrose because Sis O keeps calling us "spirit twins" and she and I have just hit it off SO well!  Well, on Tues night, we got a phone call from the Wilkes-Barre sisters asking if it would be okay with us if Sis Suckow came up here instead because of some of the appointments that they had down in Wilkes-Barre.  :D  So Wed, my companion was Sis Suckow who is super into music and theater and actually LOVES Hale!  And over and over again, we just kept realizing that we truly are spirit twins!  So needless to say, Wed was probably the funnest days ever!  :D  

Also this week, there are some members in our Branch that have an annual Cider Party where they make apple cider for a few hours and invite all their friends and about 75% of their friends are nonmembers.  So they invited us to meet some of their friends and it was so much fun!  I sent a couple pictures from it just because it really was so much fun and the apple cider that we now have in our fridge is SUPER yummy!  :D

Also this week, on Tues, we had Golden Retraining down south that lasted all day.  Seriously, we left our apartment at 7:30 am and didn't get back until about 6-6:30 pm.  And it wasn't even all the way down in Philly!!  O_o  But it was so much fun to see a few of my friends from the MTC, although most of the people that were there were actually from the other MTC zone or from the Mexico MTC, but there were a few people...  It also was just so nice to be able to get so much advice from President and from the Assistants and to hear that we really are doing a good job even though it may not always feel that way...

Oh!  And question for you!  Could you look to see if we have a piano arrangement of Come Thou Fount?  The music coordinator for our branch has asked me if I can play next month and she's specifically requested that song, but I didn't bring any music for that song...  If we don't have it, that's fine, just let me know please!  And also, could you possibly send me the 10 Virgins stuff?  If you can't, that's fine, but I just figured I'd ask since we're just trying to come up with something, anything, to do to invite people to our church building...  But we do have a lot of ideas, so if you can't send it, seriously, do not worry about it!  

Thank you so much for all your love, prayers, and support.  I truly feel it everyday!  As I said, this week has been very discouraging, but the thing that has helped me most to keep going is knowing that you're 100% behind me and that you have faith in me.  I also know that the Lord does provide blessings as long as we're obedient, just as Elder Bednar's talk in conference said.  Although he specifically was talking about tithing, it completely applies to every commandment of the Gospel.  The Lord does know and bless each of us with what we need most.  It may not be what we want or exactly how we want it, but the Lord knows best and as long as we remain obedient, in the end, everything will be made right.

Again, sorry for how much I bounced around in this email...  And keep looking in the mailbox for my letter!  ;)

SO MUCH LOVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Sister Fred...  Cottam  :)