Merry Christmas!!!

So good to speak with some of you!!! I'm not gonna lie it was really weird being called by my first name again. All our concerts went fine. We sang like angels (not really, I just like the analogy =]). Except for the last concert the sound stopped wroking, so only the people in the front and towards the middle got the full effect. Oh well, technology problems will continue to happen. As long as they felt the spirit then everything is good.The amount of people that have come to festival is reduced tremendously...I'm told because of the wheather. It's been really bad apparently, but seeing as I've never been in any kind of wheather like this it always seems bad and cold, but I guess we do have some good days =]. Over the last week we've had over 20,000 people come to the VC. That's a lot of people! One night we had 7,000 peeps crammed in. It was insane. I was basically trampled over a couple times. It's been fun though to bear my testimony about the book of mormon and the gospel a million times each night. I've learned how to say Merry Christmas in Amharic (to people from Ethiopia), Eritrea, vietnamese (although that one I don't remember), hawaiian, French, and Chinese. So fun! I love learning it, then seeing more people from that same country and saying it to them. They get so excited and try to teach me more, but I really can only learn so much in 2 minutes =].Yesterday I had 4 people from Iran come into the VC in the morning so not much was happening, but they wanted to know a little about the church and especially prophets, so I took them to the back and talked about prophets, apostasy and the book of mormon (super short, like 15 minutes) and right before I was gonna ask them if they would like a free copy of the BofM one of the men raised his hand and asked me how he can get a copy of the book for himself. When I gave him the card to fill out and said it was free and missionaries would come to share it with him and explain a lot more he got so excited! Of course his excitement made me even more excited, so I can't wait for him to read the BofM himself! so many miracles, and so little time =]Really if anything else the VC has taught me to invite everyone and seek to recognize the elect (Moroni 7:31-33...I was reading that this morning). All I can do is to declare the gospel and plant seeds, and God will make it possible for the residue of the people to have faith in Christ. I love seeing people change through reading the BofM and learning how to communicate with God. I don't get to see the end of the story being at the VC, but we plant so many seeds and I know that God will watch over those who have come in and will make His will happen.It was so cool to be a missionary during the Christmas season. Just to represent the savior at the time when people most remember Him and when their hearts are softened towards His words. Incredible blessings are available to those who will just remember and do. Remember the words of the Savior and then do what he says. Many times we just forget, it's the natural man, but blessings come and miracles happen when we remember. Share it and believe it. I do. You can too. I love and miss you all!

~Sister Witbeck~

P.S. I didn't get to talk to Dena! I don't know if she wasn't home at the time, but I realized after I hung up that no one passed her the phone. Point of that story is that you are all still loved whether I talked to you or not. I hope you all have a wonderful new year!!!!!