I love you family!!!! I am so glad that I got to talk to you. Christmas was wonderful, and I guess I'm strange, but I wasn't homesick even a little bit. It just feels so right to be here, so how could I be? I hope that doesn't hurt your feelings, because I still love you with all my heart, and even more now that I'm a missionary. It was SO good to talk to you, and hear your voices. I felt like it hadn't even been 6 months (6 months?!) since I talked to you last, though. Time is so irrelevant as a missionary, and I've learned in a personal way that it really doesn't matter to the Lord either. As long as we do what's right, repent, and come to Him, that's all that matters.
So, the story this week includes a phone call, a man named Jagdish, and Christmas Eve. A couple of days before Christmas, we had a message on the Visitors' Center phone, but the man speaking had a heavy accent, so the senior elder at the desk couldn't understand him. He gave the phone to me, I took down the number, and called this gentleman back. He told me that he works all year and only has a couple of days off every year. Two of those days are Christmas Eve and Christmas. He said he had been to the Visitors' Center 10 years ago, but he remembered it, and he had family in town from India, so he wanted to bring them here. Of all the place he could have gone on Christmas Eve, he wanted to be here. So I told him that the Sister Missionaries were performing on the 24th, and then I told him that I'd be playing the piano for the program. (If you know me at all, you know that I really do not like to publicize when I'm performing, and that I really don't like the attention. I only said this because I felt like I needed to.) Anyway, he told me that he was coming for sure, and that he'd look for me.
Well, we finished the 7 o'clock performance and I looked for him afterwards. I even went up into the audience as they were leaving and asked a couple people if they'd called the VC a couple of days before. Everyone said no. After the second performance, I scanned the audience again and saw a Hindi family watching me. When I saw the Dad, he smiled and waved to me and I knew that I'd found him. It was one of those experiences where I recognized him even before I knew it was him. That hasn't ever happened before and it was interesting to me.
When I met them on the stairs, we just connected. He had a beautiful family, and there was a light about them. They were the type of people that I just want to stay in touch with. I think we needed to connect like that, in order for them to accept the missionaries, which they did. I have faith in them! Pray for their family.
Also, pray for Mr. Biles. He was this hilarious Dad I met who came to festival with his 9 year old, and who accepted missionaries. He kept distracting himself by telling me how frustrated he was that people would tell his daughter Santa wasn't real, but the look on his face is what was so funny. I want you to imagine this lurpy, 40-year old Dad, who keeps glancing around with a petrified look on his face that someone is going to overhear him admit that Santa isn't real. It happened about every two seconds. He made eye contact with me maybe twice between all of the glancing and checking to make sure no one was listening. I wonder what everyone else was thinking, but it doesn't really matter because it was sure funny me!
I love people and I love that I get to talk to so many of them. And I love the gospel.
Stay true to what's eternal.
Love, Sister Welch
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