Hello everyone!

So good news I found out that I'm allowed to email my immediate family and grandparents so here goes! So I am in East Wenatchee Washington. My trainer is Sister Haws from Arizona and she is awesome! I really could not ask for a better trainer. She's been out for 10 months and is pretty good at Spanish. I get to speak less spanish than I thought because the English and Spanish areas are now combined, but it's still fun. It just might take me longer to learn Spanish. So my first day up I went contacting right away and it was awesome, but nerve wracking. We then spent the rest of the day in training with President Palmer. He is so cool! He's from New Zealand so he has an awesome accent. His wife is way sweet and they're both just so nice. Spokane is absolutely beautiful! I love all the trees. We spent the night in some members homes and then the next morning we found out where our areas were and who our companions were. Then I got to drive 3 hours to E. Wenatchee. It's not quite as pretty as Spokane, but it's nice to be by a river.

So right when we got here we were contacting. I didn't even get to finish unpacking until Saturday so we have been busy. The hard thing was though that all of our appointments fell through until Friday. So we got to do a lot of knocking on doors, but it actually went pretty well. They have what they call a Focus Five group in every ward. Which means that every auxiliary in a ward picks five people that are either inactive, recent converts, or investigators that they set up appointments for us to teach. So we did a ton of those for most of the week and got to teach a few investigators on the weekend. Sister Haws and I cover one of the largest areas over here. We cover two wards and a branch (Spanish). Because of this we get a car and we don't have to share it so that's pretty nice.

Christmas Eve was way awesome. I was worried it would be hard because Latinos celebrate Christmas that day and all of our appointments were with Latinos, but they came and we could teach them. One lady Magdela is so golden. I'm pretty positive she'll be the next relif society president because she's just so amazing. And she's so patient with my Spanish. All of them are and they help me out so much it's great. We went to dinner at a members house and it was really good and then we went contacting for a little bit. The first door we knocked on was a man named Miguel and he invited us right in. He has a wife and two kids and he's from Colombia and is a fisherman in Alaska. But he loves God and the Bible. He spent almost an hour telling us how he had been to a ton of different churches, but none of them seemed to teach everything that the Bible does. And he even talked about the gift of tongues and how he believes God wouldn't give it to us unless we were teaching His gospel. He's golden. We teach him and his family again tonight and I'm way excited.

Christmas Day morning was so fun. Sister Haws and I were like little kids running into the living room to open our presents. I needed everything I got and they were all so great! So thank you mom, dad, and family! We go to 3 different sacrament meetings because we cover 3 different wards and I was so excited because we had so many people say they were going to come to church and we really believed they would. It was so nervewracking waiting for them and then not a single one came. Not even the one guy we have for baptism. It was crushing. But I guess this is like my first reality check. After Church we went to Bishop Merrills house and got to call home. This was easily the highlight of my day. It was so good to hear everyone's voices! I love my family!

After that we went and had kind of a Mexican dinner with some members and then forgot that we had another dinner appointment so we went to this familie's house and had heaping plates of spaghetti. We were already stuffed before we got there, but we felt bad because we forgot about their appointment so we ate it all. Ugh. I think I have had enough Christmas goodies and food to last me a long time. From there we were going to go visit some people in the wards who didn't ever get out of the house because they were old and alone or sick. So we took our extra goodies and started delivering. The first person that was finally home was a Sister Cates. Neither of us knew anything about her. She's a smoker and so we could barely breathe when we went in there and we still smell like smoke, lovely. We had just finished chatting, and sharing a spiritual thought and were getting ready to pray when she said there's no such thing as a prophet. She went on and on about how we're all just humans and God wouldn't talk to anyone and we just follow a man and his opinion. I bore my testimony to her about how I knew there was a prophet on the earth today because I had prayed and God had shown me that there was. She then said that I was wrong. There was no way I could know something like that I could only "believe." She said there was no way I "knew" any of this stuff because God does not talk to us. I feel bad to say that I was absolutely furious. I don't get mad very easily, but I was just so shocked and upset that she could tell me that the feelings I received were not true and that I did not know that the Church was true. Any time we tried to testimony she would not hear it. We left shortly thereafter and that ended our Christmas visits and goodies. After we drove away and were talking about it I realized that I was more sad for her than upset. The fact that she wouldn't even listen to what we knew and was bent on convincing us of how brainwashed we were was heartbreaking. Sister Haws told me she still doesn't know how to handle situations like that. I know I'll see this a lot more, but this was my first time and it was so sad. I feel like I may have gotten a tiny taste of what Heavenly Father must feel like when His children do not listen to Him and even oppose Him.

Needless to say the highlight of Christmas day was definitely the phone call home. But it's all good because we're back to work this evening and there are so many people who are just jumping to get baptized. It is very sad when one rejects the truth of the Gospel, but there are so many others that are eager to accept. I have the best job ever! I can't believe I was only in the MTC last week. I feel like I've been here forever already!

I love you all and hope you had a very Merry Christmas!

My new address is:

606 Lacy Place

E. Wenatchee, WA 98802

Herman Probst