Christmas Day Email

Sorry about all the short emails, I blocked out more time to write this today. First off: merry Christmas. This is such a wonderful holiday to celebrate families, giving and Christ. These past few weeks have been a little crazy, but I'm starting to adjust to my new area. I went from serving on campus to serving in a family stake not too far from my old area, but now I'm serving with families instead of college kids, so it's a little different. It's been an awesome four months as a missionary (but who's counting?). Just before I left my last area, Cara came to church, which was awesome. It's been amazing to watch as she has progressed and felt the peace of Christ. She once stated, "when I came to your church it felt good and I felt peace, and that's why I want to be a Mormon." This Christmas (and the last few weeks) have been white with snow, which has been wonderful. I love the snow. I've heard many people who don't, who think I've never seen the bad side of snow, but I certainly have had times where my eyeballs freeze and every muscle aches because of all the snow, and still I love it. It's beautiful. It's fun. It brings out a little bit of childlike excitement. It softens sound and can be made into caves and men, balls and angels, and all manner of fun activities require snow. Love y'all- pictures of the snow attached.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas y'all. Last week was transfers so I'm now in a family stake (though still serving near Logan) and I have a new companion- Elder Shaw. He's pretty great- into coins, trains, and Legos. So sorry this is so short, but I don't have much time so I just wanted to say merry Christmas and I love y'all.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!!

This week we got to watch the First Presidency Christmas devotional with all the missionaries here in Logan, so that was fun. I really liked all the stories about the families nativity experiences because they reminded me of home (if you haven't seen it I'm sure you can find it at comeuntochrist.org or with a quick Google search). I may have been the cause if pandemonium nights in my family many times. This week we're going to talk about what works best on and what is different about college campuses, and it will be transfers in a week and a half, so we should see some changes soon.

The institute also had a get to know the missionaries game night which was pretty fun, but most of the people who weren't the ones planning it left early so we didn't really get to know all that many people. It was still fun though. That's all for this week, love y'all!!

Elder Daniel Watts

P. S. I've officially hit 3 months, only 21 to go.

President Holly and I

Happy Holidays

This week we had a great Thanksgiving and we had a couple lessons with Cara, but she still isn't coming to church so we're working on that. We also had a discussion on what makes YSA different from family areas and talked about different changes that might help, including potentially making Saturday P-day, so that might happen, but don't count on it. It's officially Christmas season, so keep a lookout for light the world and other opportunities to do service and remember Jesus.

Happy Holidays!

Love,

Elder Daniel Watts

Exploding Tire

This week I watched as my companion's bike tire exploded. He had a loner bike from the mission because his bike needed to be fixed. The back tire was already stripped and as he hit the brakes, the tire wore all the way through and popped! 

A Thanksgiving quote from an awesome talk- Beware of Pride "the prideful don't like having something so much as they like having more of it than someone else." Let's choose to humble ourselves by being thankful for what we have and not compare this year. 

Here's some pictures of the wildlife here.

Love, 

Elder Watts

Witnesses

This week has been rather boring, so I'll write about last week (which I forgot last week). We had to go home early 3 nights in a row. The first night was because of a sketchy party they host every year at USU called the howl, then we had the weekend because people would be trick or treating both days. Saturday we all watched Witnesses as a mission over zoom which is a movie about the 3 witnesses to the Book of Mormon, so that was awesome. This week we did get to go to a devotional for USU students from Elder Perkins of the 70 and we went on a hike, pictures below. 

Have a nice day from Elder Watts

Happy Birthday Nana!

This week my grandma celebrated her 80th birthday, which I thought was pretty awesome. Today I thought I'd share my memories of Nana.

 
When I was young, I always loved to go to Nana and Papa's house because I knew Nana would play with me. She has always shown her love for her others and would talk to me even though I was only a small child. If there is one thing everyone can tell about Nana, it is how much she loves others. It was also fun to visit her because her house felt like it came from a fantasy novel. There was a closet inside of a closet, a forest, boulders, a bridge, a hammock, and a tire swing outside that let a young mind run wild with imaginations. Nana loves to talk to people. I remember the way she would sincerely compliment me for reading books or solving math problems that made me enjoy them more. She loved her grandkids, and we were always spoiled when we were with her. She has spent her life serving others, and you can see how happy it has made her. I was young at the time, but I remember when she spent almost a year in China teaching English because of how much I missed visiting her. 

Nana and Papa held cousin camp as cousins turned 12, and I absolutely loved it. With my cousins, Katia, Ethan, and Eliza, I got to spend a week with Nana and Papa. We made delicious food and went to exiting places. It was a blast! Far more recently, this last summer we went to Seattle together and had an amazing time enjoying the many sights and activities there. The characteristics of Nana are loving, caring, talkative, compromising, peaceable, and fun. What an amazing grandma!

From all of the Johnson Hearts,
We love you Nana and Happy Birthday!!

Snow!

This made me think of home.