Snow, Christmas and Carols

Hey friends and family!

I hope things are going well for all of you. Over here we got a nice blanket of snow, and city Christmas decorations are in full force.

A very fun thing that happened this week, was that the mission was able to attend the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. We didn't get as good of seats as last General Conference. However, they were still really good seats in the second row of plazas back. It was pretty amazing to hear from the Prophet speaking at the end, and the message was very good to hear at this time of year. His insights into the type of gifts God offers, and how we need to embrace them was very informative.

On Monday night, our District was able to attend a Christmas Dinner Gala over in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, for the US & Canada zone. Our responsibility was to pick up, and transport the food for the event from Food Services in the Church Office Building to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. It was a lot of food. The event was great though. We had A few musical performances, some speeches, and the keynote speaker for the night was R William Bennett. In case you haven't heard of him. He is the author of the books, The Christmas Gift, and Jacob T. Marley. Both of which are being turned into movies. It was really interesting to see his story leading up to the Jacob T. Marley book, and the process he went through. It does sound like a very interesting read.

Last night, a group of twelve of us had the opportunity to go caroling at the East Millcreek assisted living center. I also was in charge of driving half of them. It was generally a lot farther away from the mission bounds than is usually normal for community outreach, given that it's about 17 minutes south by interstates. However, it was a really special evening. When we arrived it seemed like nobody had been expecting us. So, we walked around a little bit until we talked to a nurse about what was going on. As the nurse was asking around, pretty soon there were requests coming from rooms for caroling. To fill them all, we were singing for about an hour-forty-five. It was really amazing, and the residents were just absolutely thrilled.

Something I've been really excited about lately is that I now finally have a blender! On the mission, blenders are somewhat of a treasured item. This being because the apartments do not come equipped with them, and they only sporadically appear at the mission swap meet. The hard part with the swap meet, is all the brand new Elders get to go in 20 minutes early. They don't usually know about the blenders, but their trainers sure do. So, generally they're snagged before you can get to them. Last Saturday was swap meet, and I wasn't planning on grabbing anything. I had kinda gave up on the blender a while ago. However, I decided to scout things out around the perimeter, and saw a big cardboard box. Inside were two full set Ninja blenders. I had gotten there early enough that I was at the front of the line. After the new Elders went through I went straight for the box. To my luck, nobody had grabbed them. So now one of them is mine. The main reason I've been missing a blender is morning shakes, and this morning's shopping consisted of a lot of frozen fruit. So that's something I'm looking forward to.

That's pretty much it for this week. I'll write you all in the next one.

from,

Elder Hall