Shauna Graves' Mission: A New Year! - Christmas Hike Along Pacifica Cliffs - Christmas Visit From Elder Ronald A Rasband - Juan's Baptism

Christmas already?!?! Wow! 2020 is finally at the end. This week has been full of fun things for us! Sorry for not sending an email last week. We had a short pday on Monday and then we had the entire day on Christmas as a pday too. But we were so busy having fun with the Elders so we didn't have time to write an entire email.

Let's hop right into it shall we? So when I was serving in South San Francisco I was serving with this one elder who's grandpa happens to be Elder Ronald A Rasband. Elder Rasband decided that for the Christmas gift for his grandson he would visit his mission. So we were lucky enough to have Elder Rasband talk to us for about 2 hours. It was unfortunate because if it wasn't for the virus he said he would have been come in person. But a zoom call was more than enough :) He talked mostly about the process of calling missionaries and reassigning missionaries. He said this "Take this as my testimony. The Oakland/San Francisco mission is exactly where you need to be." That got me so good. Sister Westenskow and I both got emotional. We are both reassigned but it was so comforting hearing that from an apostle specifically to me and my mission. It was so special. I'm really thankful to be on the receiving end of his grandson's Christmas gift.

In other news, we were trying to find a way to spread some Christmas cheer to our whole zone. It's a long story on how we got the inspiration for the gifts we gave each of them but we made each person in our zone into a little clay person and made it a fridge magnet. We also made them all homemade cinnamon rolls because we know that their moms would have made them some on Christmas morning so we were going to be their moms for the day. We drove around the entire peninsula on Christmas eve delivering our gifts. I'll attach photos so you can all enjoy :)

Christmas day was probably one of the most fun days of my life. We woke up and called our families and opened presents with them. After we opened presents we got together with the Spanish and Portuguese elders and went on a little hike along the cliffs in Pacifica. It was BEAUTIFUL. Then we got lunch after at an Indian place. 100% recommend Indian pizza. We went home after that and were bored for about 2 hours before we called the elders and told them that we would be going to play some soccer and volleyball if they happened to be there too we could just play together hahaha! SO FUN!! Another thing I recommend. Christmas just full of laughs, being outside, and good food. Nothing better.

One more thing! We had a baptism! My first baptism of my mission!! Juanito was originally going to be baptized at Crissy Fields in the ocean by the golden gate bridge. But then he changed his mind the night before and wanted to get baptized in the chapel because it was too cold. These latinos really be thinking 60° is cold. Hilarious. That caused multiple problems for us but we wont get into that :) The baptism was awesome and special for all of us. We are so happy to see Juan make these changes in his life. We are so proud of him. The book is blue and the church is true!!!

Thank you all for reaching out to me on Christmas. I hope you all had the best Christmas of your life. I'm sure it was one for each of us to remember. :)

See yall next week!

Hermana Graves

1- the Rasbands <3