Turkey...

My Most Adorable Family...

Hey:) I miss you all so much!!! I just want to start out my Thanksgiving letter Giving Thanks. For you all, for my friends for my extended family, for my mission call, for my Costa Rica, for my blessing, for my trials, for the Church, for 20 years of love and support, 20 years of enjoying thee blessing that come from a Christ centered home and 20 years of having wonderful, amazing, talented, lovely, children of God placed in my Path:) More then anything this year I am thankful for the knowledge I have and cherish of who my savior is and what he has done for me. 

It’s the heartbreaking truth but here in Costa Rica they don’t celebrate thanksgiving....... why not? I’m not sure, I mean come on. All we do is eat, hang out with the family, eat, watch football, eat, cook, and well eat! Who doesn’t want to celebrate this day?! Obviously It means a lot more to me then that, its the day when I really remember and think about the things that are the true blessings of this life. In the spirit of this holiday I’ve been trying really hard to have a grander spirit of gratitude in my prayers. This week I stopped asking my Heavenly Father for things, and have been doing my very best to just tell him thank you. It’s hard and I’m not perfect at it, but it helps me to focus my prayers a little more and remember to whom I’m speaking and all the things I have to be grateful for. Every night my personal prayers are a little longer as I remember more and more things that are blessings in my life. Sometimes I have to say 3 or 4 prayers or I just pray like the little boys and say in the name of Jesus Christ...... wait wait wait, ......... all the extras I forgot, okay for real now, in the name of Jesus Christ...."  I hope that each one of you this week accepts the challenge to say 1 prayer only giving the Lord thanks and not asking for a thing. Its fun, try it:)

This week alone I have so many blessings that I don’t even know what to do with them all. We had all kinds of fun activities this week. 1. I’m finally legal!!!! I got my "cedula" ... which basically says that they can’t deport me for at least a year. Yay!  It took almost a whole day to get it, but it was worth it! Plus I got to go with all a lot of other elders and hermanas and it was a fun flashback to the MTC. 

2. This week we had a Multizone conference that was super sweet!! I learned a lot from everyone who talked to us. Its incredible how literally everything that we learn in PMG we can find a story in The book of Mormon that demonstrates this principle or idea exactly. My President is en serio incredible. (Hermana Montoya and I agree that he’s at least a future apostle, if not one day prophet:)). He showed us a clip of the Utah Utes and Oregon game that just happened where the player dropped the ball like 2 feet before the end zone because he was celebrating to early and gave us some very good advice, DONT DROP THE BALL. This month we have been working so, so hard as a mission to achieve the goal of 200 baptisms and were sooo close! This is the last week we have and us personally we have a baptism planned for the 29th! That’s cutting it close... but don’t worry, were not celebrating to soon. 

The baptism that we have planned this week is a very, very special one. Joni is the husband of our cook Jovana. They have 5 kids. She’s been a member more then 16 years but he hasn’t ever taken getting baptized seriously. He has had a lot of missionaries pass in and out of his house without giving them a second thought, but something happened and he’s began to change. He’s been cafe, cigar, and alcohol free for 2 weeks now!!!! Wow. What changed is the knowledge he has about the temple. They want to be sealed.....!!!  Anyways so we’ve been helping him to get ready and it hasn’t been easy, but were so close now. A miracle that happened the other day is we were talking to them and Jovana said you know why your baptismal day is the 29 of November...? Because I was baptized the 29th of November 16 years ago...... we didn’t know that when we gave him the date, but the Lord knew it would be the motivation he’d need to accept so he told us the 29th:) wow. The other beautiful thing is that 1 week after Joni is baptized and confirmed he can receive the priesthood and baptize his 8 year old son Andres:) and in 1 year we will go to the temple with them!!!! What great things I have to be thankful for. 

Anyways, the time is short and their souls that need saving! I love you all and hope, no no I order you all (as a representative of JesuCristo ;) haha)  to eat at least my portion this thanksgiving. You’ll eat it and you’ll like it! I love you all pero tanto! Prayers and gracias from Costa Rica,

All my love, Hermana Kugath