Ariel On A Mission!: Greetings from Asheville from both of us!

Hey Mumma and Dad!
   It's good to hear that your vacation is going well. Make sure to take lots of pictures. I love pictures! Sister Dean and I had a really good time in Bad Bentheim with our zone yesterday. It was fun to sit down and eat a turkey dinner and just enjoy everyone's company. It's a family away from family. It took us 3 1/2 hours to get there and another 3 and 1/2 to get home, that's why we got permission to email today. I've attached a picture of my plate. I won the drawing to receive a drum stick and so that's why I got the whole thing sitting on my plate. I also attached a picture of the thankful tree we made. All the leaves have things that we are thankful for written on them. One of the elders wrote ''girls'' on one of the leaves. Ha ha! And the last picture is me in front of a windmill built in 1857 in Midlum, a tiny dorf in our area. Sister Dean and I have been working hard on contacting all the less active or inactives on our ward list to find out if people still have interest in the church and if they mind receiving contact or visits from the church. Anyways we rode the train to Dorum and then biked the 6 kilometers to Midlum to contact 4 people and then went back to Dorum to contact some more people. It is such a lovely bike ride through lots of fields. We get to see lots of cows and goats and sheep and duckies. Not the most pleasant smelling as you could imagine but it's just lovely and fresh.

   Thanks for sending my packages. I'll be sure to call the office sometime next week and see if it came. I already talked to the office lady and she said she could forward it to me when it arrives. The Christmas package I will get on the 12th of December because half the mission will be coming together in Hamburg to meet with Elder Richards of the 70 and that's when mail from the office will be there. So thanks a lot! You all will get Christmas gifts, it just may be a little late but I'll do my best to get things there on time. I'm glad you didn't listen to Dad and bought a fatty turkey anyways. I missed your stuffing this year.

    Well this week we had some fun experiences. On Tuesday we went to Hamburg and visited the dentist. Sister Dean had a cavity filled before her mission and it seems that the filling didn't do the best job because she had a cavity under the filling. The doctor couldn't see anything on the surface of her tooth and was going to send us home but then decided to take an x-ray just in case and that's when he saw something funny he said. So she got a big shot of novocaine and I got to see that big needle. It made me think of Michael's experience on his mission when he had to get a root canal without any medicine and both he and his companion were crying. Ha ha! Sister Deans tooth is all better. We had transfer call on Saturday and Sister Dean and I are both staying in Bremerhaven. Merry Christmas in Bremerhaven. We saw trees for €9,99 in Bad Bentheim so if we can find them like that here we're gonna buy ourselves a big real tree. Sister Dean also has never had a real tree and that just can't do. We got to get a tree of some sort. Halberstadt was officially closed to sisters. Sister Tidwell has been transferred to Dresden where Sister Dean started her mission. I think she will like it so hopefully all goes well.

    Sister Dean and I were doing doors the other night when we decided we probably needed to end soon because it was getting late and people tend to get angry so she said we had to go to the 1st floor and door it (we were on the 6th) and then we could go. I thought okay? But didn't really think anything of it. So we went to the first floor and met some interesting people but nothing really turned out. Well the last door we got to a mother and her daughter answered. We talked to them about their faith and the Book of Mormon. The mom said she wasn't interested so we asked if they knew anyone who was and the girl said, ''Yea, me'' so we talked to her longer, explained the Book of Mormon and got her contact information to pass along to the missionaries in her area. It was way neat and just a good lesson of how important it is to listen to promptings. I'm glad Sister Dean heard it and followed it.

    President Kosak announced that starting in March till May we will receive 36 new sister missionaries which means we will be opening 19 new areas. How neat is that!? He said all sisters that are in the field now will be training. That's crazy but so cool! It more than doubles the amount of Sisters we have right now. I'm glad there are so many sisters who are willing to serve.

    Well the tail end of this last week I seem to have come down with a cold of some sort. Today seems to be the worse of it so hopefully it'll go away soon. Do you guys know why no one emailed me? I only got one from you two. Thanks for emailing me. I hope everyone is doing alright. Enjoy your weekend and have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I miss and love you guys.
-Ariel Nell