Letter #91

Merry Christmas everyone :)

This week was super busy and crazy and funny, and it feels like we didn't really get that much done because of all the holiday things going on for everyone.  But we did have a really cool baptism, so it was definitely a good week.  On Tuesday, we had our mission Christmas party, which was absolutely crazy.  It was really cool to see the whole mission, because I kinda know a lot of people now.  We did a white elephant gift exchange, which was alright.  There were a few pretty funny gifts (i.e. an Assassin's Creed: Unity poster that was altered to read Nicene Creed: One Lord.  One Faith.  One Baptism), but a lot of them weren't that exciting.  Ha, I ended up with a broken bobble-head.  But we had a pretty good group of people, so it was fun.  We also had skits from each zone (and they all were about 3 times the length they were supposed to be, so we ended up going super late), almost all of which made fun of President Blatter's frequent use of the word "gosh."  We also had lunch together and sang some Christmas songs (very loudly), and followed it up with a devotional.  Everyone had to prepare a talk, but only a few people were going to get called on, so it was a little scary.  I didn't prepare super well, so it was a good thing I didn't get called on.   We also read the last chapter of the Book of Mormon together (we have been reading it as a mission for the last 3ish months), and then got out at around 6 (we got there at about 8:30, so it was a long day.  Including travel both ways, it was about 12 hours).  So that was a really good day, but it was long. 

On Wednesday, we had a zone meeting, which was pretty fun.  Since it was Christmas Eve, we decided to make zone lunch into a potluck.  My companion decided that the only thing we could bring to a potluck was a rabbit, so we roasted one of those and brought it for the zone to eat.  It tasted a lot like turkey.  We also had a lot of normal food, so I mostly ate that.  After zone meeting, we had to go out caroling for 2 hours, so we went to downtown Olympia with our zone.  That was pretty cool.  We got to meet a bunch of cool people, and it wasn't raining on us, and we were next to the water and the capitol building, so it was all just really exciting.  We had a lot of people of "alternative lifestyles" come up and talk to us, and a lot of them were a lot nicer to us than most of the Christians that passed by, so that was kinda interesting.  We had a really good time though.

Christmas was really fun too.  We spent a lot of time with other members who fed us all day, and we got to Skype home, and sleep in for an hour.  We had a lot of people take good care of us.

The day after Christmas, we spent most of the day in service.  There was a member who had a Christmas flood and so we helped them salvage out their house for them.  They were redoing one of their walls too, and they were trying to show me how to do that, but construction mud and sheetrock isn't my specialty, so I mostly stuck to cleaning.  Later that day was when we had our baptism, so that day was pretty packed.  The whole family came out to the baptism (all of the family except for the one who just got baptized are non-members or inactive) and then to church on Sunday, so it was really great to see all of them there.

And anyway, that was my week.  I hope all of you had a Merry Christmas and will have a Happy New Year this next week!  Bye