Merry Christmas, part 2

On Monday, I got a hair cut from a member and hung out with them for a bit. After having breakfast for dinner (my favorite!) with some members, Elfer Bresnahan and I got to go out with Santa Claus as his elfs and deliver presents to a few kids! It was so fun to watch the kids faces and their reactions. After Santa dropped us back off at a members, we ended our evening by playing some games with members. What a fun Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning, Elder Baba and Osgood came over to our apartment and opened some presents with us. Thanks everyone for all the gifts and letters and prayers that have been sent my way! After playing with our new deck of Phase 12 cards and listening to some of our new music, we rode through the rain over to a member's house who had our whole district over for breakfast. It was so yummy! They're awesome! Christmas wouldn't be the same without the members. They spoil us. I'm grateful.

After dropping by the Taylors and calling you guys, we rode through some more rain and stopped by our investigator family to hang out for a few hours. We played a couple games of Uno Speed and Catch phrase. It was cool to just be able to hang out and become better friends with them. We came back later in the evening and played some more games with them just before heading home too.

For dinner that night we went over to our reactivated less actives and had prime rib, yorkshire pudding, mashed taters, and string beans. Yumo! When we first arrived at their house we chatted for a bit, they went into prepare the food some more and I was so tuckered out by that time that I just drifted off into sleepy land for a bit. Haha. It was a long fun day!

This morning we had a great district meeting and afterwards I was able to interview yet another candidate for baptism in our district! I'm absolutely loving being able to be apart of so many baptisms even though we haven't been able to have our own (yet!). It's been such a blessing and it makes me want to be better and better -- after all I am constantly teaching and asking people to change their lives for the better, so I ought to be doing so myself everyday. The Gospel has helped me do that so well. That's the greatest gift I think I've been given ever - the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It's also the one I've most enjoyed giving.

I hope everyone's had a great holiday season! Even though it's wrapping up with New Years this next week, I pray that we will all remember to keep the Spirit of Christ with us. Just like we come to Church every week to partake of the Sacrament and remember Christ then, Christmas is a yearly thing that we do to remember Him. So let's not let it be put to waste by going back to our old ways. New Years Day is a great way to wrap up the holidays by helping us remember what we've been blessed with, what we need to do, and then to set the goals and get to it! I know I need to do so.

I love you all. Keep a very merry Christmas in your heart.

Merry Christmas!

'T was the week before Christmas. . .

Last P-day we went downtown Portland again because Elder Bresnahan and another Elder in the district hadn't been there yet. Voo Doo doughnuts is the same old same old and there's still plenty of weird, crazy people down there. Haha. It's always fun traveling the max with a few other missionaries though. Since it was more missionaries this time there seemed to be less crazy people coming up to us and yelling at us... less, but there was still some. lol.

After dinner that evening we had an appointment cancel, so we decided to go tracting. I twisted Elder Bresnahan's arm enough so that he and I ended up singing duets of Christmas Carols when we came to each door. People were far less irritated and even though everyone still said "I'm not interested" in the end, it felt more satisfying to deliver the Spirit of Christ without them having as much of a patronizing idea about us.

Tuesday I joined Elder Baba in his area (my old area), Sunset Hills, for an exchange while Elder Bresnahan split with the other Elder in Oak Hills. Oddly enough, Elder Baba and I both agreed that it felt like nothing had changed since we were companions and it felt like just another day. Haha. It was good to see a few members in the area that I haven't seen in a while, in addition to going to the Portland Temple Visitor Center in the evening with a former investigator of mine. 

A productive and happy week for the "Elfers"

Last P-day the Vances took us shopping at Winco for groceries and afterwards, Sister Vance and I made the yummiest chocolate candies - all it takes is Oreos, cream cheese, and chocolate chips. I had fun baking with her. She's so sweet.

On Tuesday, I couldn't take it any more and punched Elder Bresnahan's light's out! Haha. No, not really. But we did take him to the dentist to get some work done and he had one of his front teeth removed to be replaced temporarily by a flipper tooth on a retainer. He has taken a liking to popping his tooth in and out while we're talking to people and freaking them out. Now he really does have the right to say that all he wants for Christmas is his two front teeth. Lol. We came back after Elder Bresnahan's surgery was done and hit the streets to tract.

In the evening, I was able to have another meeting as District Leader with the Zone Leaders and the Stake President. The Stake President is super enthused about missionary work and he is only making our job easier. It's such a blessing to be able to counsel with him and see what we can do more to help him.

On Wednesday, I had yet another opportunity to give a baptismal interview - my second one in the last week, and from what my Elders have told me, the district will give me many more opportunities for such a blessing in the near future. Even if Elder Bresnahan and I can't personally have a white Christmas, the month of December has already proven to be blessing us with a 'surrounding blizzard' of baptisms.  This interview, I was much more calm and it felt as though I had been doing it for years. Surely, this was attributed to the Spirit of the Lord and not simply my own abilities or capacities. The candidate I was interviewing was extremely prepared and I felt God whisper to me that he was ready. What a wonderful thing.

On Thursday, we couldn't wait until our appointment that evening with our new family we're teaching. Our anticipation wasn't disappointed. When we arrived at the family's apartment, we were a little uneasy in wondering if they had forgotten or scheduled a party instead of our appointment because they had several other people over and they were watching the football game. The visitors explained that they were just there for dinner and that they were planning on heading out as soon as we got there. We offered them to stay if they wanted and .. they did for the whole lesson! It turns out the visitors were the sister and kids of our family they too were a part-member family.  After the prayer when we were getting up to leave, the sister started asking us questions about baptism and coming to our ward because that's where their family goes and we gladly answered in the affirmative! We were so excited. I always feel like I'm walking on sunshine when I leave that family's house.

Friday we had Zone Conference, Christmas Edition. It was really neat learning about how we can teach people the principle of repentance as a process rather than a one-time thing. It was fun, as usual, to hook up with the missionaries I know and we had a fun talent show and devotional with the local area Seventy, Elder Hanson to complete the day.

That evening we traveled back through tons of traffic and made it right on time to our Ward's Christmas party. There was a ton of people there and we had really great food. Everyone kept telling us that we needed to eat more cause there was stuff left. Haha. President and Sister Morby came and we introduced them to several of the members there. Then the next morning, the stake president and his wife had us over as a district for breakfast. They are so great to us. I feel spoiled.

After church yesterday, I made three pans of brownies during lunch and then we delivered them to people around the ward while caroling with the Ward Missionaries. It was super fun.

I hope everyone has a great week and you all give to many around you.