Holy cow, Christmas happened....and it was GREAT! I'll start with Christmas Eve, I guess. We found out this week that Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day are all non-proselytize days which is pretty exciting. That means we can only go out by appointment which really means that we have to stay home all day except for our dinner appointments. So Christmas Eve, we delivered a lot of presents and candy to people by just leaving packages on their doorsteps. It was kind of amazing and we got to end the day by singing songs around our Christmas tree and playing board games with our roommates (I'm not as good at Clue as I thought I was).
We started out christmas day with a 2 hour hike up our usual Thunderbird mountain, overlooking the Phoenix Temple. Sister Bauer and I were planning on running the whole 5 mile loop but when we got
there, at 5:45 in the morning while it was cold and dark, we quickly got rid of that ridiculous notion. We came back and had a big breakfast, studied for a couple of hours, then exchanged gifts and opened the gifts from home. It was small and cozy and pretty much my favorite thing that has happened in a while. At around 2 we went to a member's house to FaceTime our families! This makes me sound like an awful person but I was really glad that my companion's parents are currently not living together so she got to skype them separately which meant I could talk to my family longer.....(yikes, I am a terrible human) We then had dinner and visited another family for Christmas and went on a nice walk with them. We ended the day by playing a CRAZY game of Apples to Apples and then passing out on the floor. It was fantastic.
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Holiday hikes are the bomb
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I feel like I have come to a point in this area where I am content with the way we do things and the little to no progress we are making. I have been struggling a lot these past few weeks with motivation to go out and do work so I was really worried for Christmas. Everyone told me that it would be the hardest day and that I would be so homesick and that I would cry even though I'm not a big crier. Well, I shouldn't have been worried at all because it was a great day, I didn't feel homesick at all, and no one cried during my whole phone call home. It was the easiest thing! Sometimes I feel like everyone on missions gets waaaaay too dramatic about how hard things are. Honestly, i think if you have the right attitude, a mission is not very hard at all. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but that's how I feel.
The only hard part about christmas was the day after. Why? Because we went to do some service at a member's house for a few hours and they were playing Christmas music the whole time. After a while, they asked if I wanted to pick the next cd. Of course, I picked the best option there: John Denver and the Muppets! It's not Christmas without that album and I was so glad I got to listen to it! Well, about halfway through the second song, my companion starts yelling, "WHO THE HECK IS JOHN DENVER?" And what does she do? She goes over and CHANGES THE CD TO A MARIAH CAREY ALBUM. I have never wanted to physically hit my companion until that moment. I told her she ruined my Christmas and she laughed because I don't think she realized I was being serious.
Anyway, it was a great week and I'm looking forward to our New Year's celebration. I'm making mom's shrimp dip and popping open some bubbly. It's gonna get rull crazy up in here.
I hope you all had a good week and that you come up with some awesome resolutions and guesses for the new year! Let me know how everything goes!
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