The best Christmas of my life!

I hope you all had a great Christmas week! I know I sure did! Everything was perfect! Christmas as a missionary is just the best. 

Monday- We had a good P day. Oh man, we played dodge ball and I just got wailed on. Ha, I guess everyone did though. That game is a little bit more painful when you're playing with a bunch of 20 year old guys who are forced to be polite to proper all week while people slam the door in their face. Blasting someone in the face with a dodge ball just makes you feel better. As long as you're not the one getting blasted anyway. For the rest of our evening we made our rounds and shared Christmas messages to a list of people that the Bishop gave us. 

Tuesday- Santa came early this year and gave me an extra special present. I woke up sick as a dog today. It had been going around the District and I thought I was in the clear, but I guess it caught up to me. I knew it was a bad idea to finish Elder Wood's French Dip sandwich. So yeah I felt pretty cruddy today. It probably didn't help that we did a whole bunch of service today either. We finished the Charlilton’s floor, moved a giant sectional couch into a member’s basement and then helped the Halls get ready for their Christmas party that they invited us to. But hey, we got it all taken care of! We had a lesson with an investigator named Dave but honestly I was so far gone by then that I could tell you how it went. 

Wednesday- We had a great appointment with Denitra in the morning. I still felt super sick so that sucked, but besides for that it was a good day. Denitra has been really sick lately too apparently. She's doing well though. Starting in the new year we move to 9 o'clock church, and she'll be able to start coming to church with her work schedule. 

Thursday- Merry Christmas Eve! I felt a little bit better today. Still not good, but better. A member family took us out to an all you can eat pizza place for lunch. It was there big extended family so there were a million little kids running all over the place like a family reunion should be.  And thus begins the two day feast. For dinner we joined another family reunion feast. I dare say there was an even bigger collection of screaming kids at this one. It was fun though! Oh man, the food was so good too! It was great to meet all the different families too! A good half of the people at the get togethers that we went to on Christmas and Christmas Eve weren't members, so don't worry, we weren't just eating. We were doing missionary work too! After dinner we made our rounds and dropped off little Christmas cards and what not to the members of the ward. It was fun!

Friday- Yay! Christmas! What a great day! I dare say that this was the best Christmas of my life! That’s  pretty big because I've had some pretty awesome Christmases! Elder Robinson and I did our morning studies and opened our packages and then took off to The Horrocks's house for Breakfast and skyping. Oh and thank you so so much to everyone who sent me cards and packages and all sorts of great stuff. You're all the best! I felt so loved and cared for! Anyway, breakfast was awesome. Elder Robinson Helped make Crepes! There was bacon and eggnog and hash browns and eggs and all sorts of breakfast glory! Oh man, I love breakfast. Skyping was awesome too! I even got to see my brother Brycen! He's in Scotland on his mission right now so we all got to three-way skype together! It’s so nuts to see him as a missionary! He's just like me! It’s weird to see someone else in an Elder Cluster name tag. I know he's giving it a good name though! My first Christmas was definitely a lot harder than my second so I feel for him. Seeing my family was great! Knowing that I'm going to see them in a couple weeks made saying goodbye pretty easy. After Skyping we went to the Halls house for a giant Christmas lunch! We had the ham and turkey and potatoes and the whole nine yards. It’s crazy how different each Christmas party was. Really everyone was doing the same thing, just getting together with a whole lot of people and a whole lot of food but each family is just so different. It was great though. We got to join in on their white elephant! I got a digital picture frame to display my mission pictures and Elder Robinson got a Holiday scratcher! He won Twenty Bucks! (This party had far fewer members than the other, which almost made it that much more fun. I know the word of wisdom frowns upon it, but a little alcohol at a family reunion sure spices thing up! Finally we made it to dinner number one. The Stocks, an older couple in the ward, invited over a non member couple and a super awesome recent convert. We chose not to eat too much this time around but it was great to meet their friends! We talked a lot about the different church history sites around the area, and some of how the church started. Next we went to dinner number two. This one might have been my favorite of the day. Not because of the food but the night was just so.. Christmasy! We all talked about different mission stories and then sang Christmas songs and shared a message about receiving the gift of Christ and then turning around and finding a gift within yourself to give back to God. It was great! Then last but not least we went to dinner number three at Denitra's. Oh man, that one might have been the best food of the day. She barbecued up a whole bunch of ribs and all sorts of great meat and we had baked beans and green beans and Mmmm! At first I told her I was way too full to eat anymore which was a very true statement but I went forward with faith and tried to eat just one more time and I'm sure glad I did. Food aside we got to meet her oldest son. Apparently he had met with missionaries quite a bit in the past and said he would be interested in meeting with them again so we passed the referral back on down to Raytown. Wow, that is a long explanation of my day. I hope you all made it through. That about sums it up though. After that we went home and slipped into a food coma. 

Saturday- Phew, this is a long email! I'll wrap it up soon, I promise!  We had one more appointment with Denitra and it went fantastic! It’s been hard to meet with her before this week, but we talked about setting up a regular twice a week meeting schedule. We taught about tithing and fast offerings today and guess what! She's on date to be baptized! Wooo! January 16th! It'll be my last Saturday of the mission! What a perfect way to wrap things up!

Sunday- We did Church stuff and stuff. We taught the gospel principles class on exaltation. By now I'm mostly feeling better. It all moved into my sinuses so I'm ridiculously congested but besides that I'm feeling well. 

Welp, Thanks for reading! I hope you all have a happy new years eve! This is my very last 2015 entry. Talk to you all next year! 

Love, Elder Cluster 

Sent from Zion