Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all of you from Trinidad

Senior missionaries met together Sunday afternoon and put together gift baskets for each of the young missionaries to receive. Christmas Eve morning the senior missionaries made a big breakfast at the mission home for all the young missionaries.  The President gave a Christmas message, the missionaries sang carols, had a huge breakfast, made cards for people in their areas and sang to Sister Mehr who has been very sick with Legionnaires disease.  She is doing much better now and was able to come out to hear the missionaries sing to her. 

 See Elder Monson in the background and all the missionaries turning to sing to Sister Mehr.

 Christmas Eve night we had dinner at our apartment for all the senior missionaries that live close.  We had turkey, dressing, yams, cranberry salad, rolls, cheesy broccoli, and christmas pudding for dessert.  It was truly a miracle cooking that meal with tiny pans and about 1/2 the actual ingredients for each of the different recipes!  Somehow it turned out and after dinner we played some really fun games.  This was the pencil game.

 The semi finals for the pencil competition.  I took the prize!

 We each brought white elephant gifts and they were sooooo funny!  The most sought after was the blood remover!

 Elder Brown, former stake president Brown, got a lovely fake rose which you can see he adored!

 Here he is wearing it on his ear!

 Here is the mission nurse playing the Oreo game.  You must work the Oreo down your face and into your mouth without using your hands!  The competition was fierce.

 Sister Brown, one of the mission auditors, was pretty good but could not stop laughing!

 Elder Monson was determined to win, nah, that would never be the case!  He was on a mission to figure out the fastest way to do it and it had to have something to do with grimacing in just the right way.

 ..............and arching and flailing around.......

with perfect poise and grace. He didn't win but it sure was fun watching him try so hard.  I about had a heart attack laughing!

Christmas day we had some young Elders over for lunch and they skyped their families from our computers and then we skyped our families and the young Sisters dropped by to visit.  It was a quiet  recognition of the great gift of the Savior to the world.

I wanted to share a story from church last Sunday, the day before Christmas Eve.  You should tell it to your children if any of them are disappointed in what they got for Christmas.  

When we travel to different wards and branches every week we get to attend the Young Adult class and the YM and YW classes.  The YW president in this branch was teaching the lesson.  She said that since it was so close to Christmas she wanted to have the girls come up and tell what they were thankful for, draw a picture of a Christmas carol on the board and then we would all sing the carol together.  She started by telling what she was thankful for and then turned the time over to the three girls that were in class.  She had provided a tree for their ward for Christmas and had brought it home after the Christmas party and since she  had already decorated her house and didn't need another tree, she asked her housekeeper if she would like it.  Her housekeeper began to cry and said she would love it because her children, (6) had NEVER had a Christmas tree and it would mean so much to them.  The children were so excited to have the tree that they went rumaging in the neighborhood until they found some discarded containers of different sizes and scraps of discarded paper and wrapped them and put them under the tree while she was out of the house.  When the mother returned and saw the wrapped items under the tree, she asked the children what was in them.  They explained that nothing was, of course, they had just seen pictures of gifts and wanted to have presents under their tree. The YW president said that this woman, raising her 6 children alone, had never had electricity in her tin house!  The three girls came to the front of the room.  The first YW said that she was so thankful because she lived in a family where she could have food to eat in the morning.  Some of her friends were not so blessed and only could eat one time a day and she was thankful she could eat breakfast too.  The next girl, 16, said that she was so thankful because she had been living with her family in her Uncle's home and they finally were able to get their own house.  She was thankful for a house.  The third girl said she was so thankful for her friends at church because she had problems at home and she was not allowed to get baptized until she turned 18 but she could come to church and feel safe and feel the spirit.  

Merry Christmas .......it is....... because the Savior lives, loves and sustains all those who turn to him and seek to follow him.  He can make burdens light, He has promised He will help lift them.  

Until next week.....................................