December 19, 2007-January 4, 2008

December 19 - January 4, 2008

WE’RE BAAACK! After a fairly substantial Christmas break we are returning to our present reality, with great reluctance. We really enjoyed opening presents, visiting the Grand Canyon, eating yummy food all day long, and more recently, sleeping in. Now our bodies are struggling to regain the rigors of early rising, dieting, responding to calls for rides, and other missionary tasks, such as feeding the missionaries.

December 20 we experienced our first real Mission Christmas Party, as last year’s was simply another training. Over 150 missionaries met at a Stake Center in Tempe where we were bombarded with missionary humor, aka Zone skits, and a traditional ham and funeral potatoes lunch. One missionary was celebrating his birthday. His grandmother lives in Phoenix and made birthday cake and cupcakes for everyone there. We also had a gift exchange, which we knew nothing about until we arrived that morning. I said tough, we’ll be presentless. But Robert (who says I should type that he’s the senior companion…ha! If he wants that here he’ll have to learn to type himself!). Anyway, Robert, being the more compassionate half of the companionship, went to the Dollar Store and actually purchased what turned out to be the prime gift of the entire party. He filled Christmas bags with hot chocolate, a mug, tootsie rolls, Certs, a flashlight, batteries and gloves…all for $10.

One of the best moments of the conference was at the very beginning. President Craig was setting the baptism goal for next year and said the Zone Leaders wanted everyone to pray for confirmation that they had chosen a goal that can be reached. So they had asked if we could all to kneel in the chapel and pray. As we did so he said, “This seems very Catholic, but let’s do it anyway.” At the end of the prayer he stood up and said, “Well, at least no one crossed themselves at the end of the prayer.”

At 4:00 we picked Beckie up at the airport and started a week of great Christmas celebrating. Thank you all for your lovely, much appreciated Christmas gifts and phone calls. Thanks to your gift cards we will only need to be naked from Cibecue to the nearest mall in Phoenix when we leave in March.

The day after Christmas we took the train to the Grand Canyon where we stayed one night at Maswik Lodge. Beckie and I saw the sunset from Yavapai Overlook while Robert (the big wuss) stayed in the motel room. The sunset was beautiful and in another week or so I might be warm again. It was 9 degrees that night with a breeze. It was cold all the time we were there but we still did everything we wanted to do and had a great time. The Canyon is beautiful in the winter.

We took Beckie back to the airport Saturday morning, December 28, and returned to Cibecue that afternoon. Saturday night Bonito called and asked Robert to speak in Sacrament meeting the next day. So nice to be back! I was sick (the frostbite was still healing) and didn’t go to church Sunday. So they had to get a substitute for Primary…NOT…the kids just ran around totally unsupervised until Sacrament meeting.

New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day we truthfully did as little as humanly possible. We watched every football game broadcast for two days and the Rose Parade from start to finish. In spite of my OCD I actually sat still and watched the entire parade. Robert says he thinks that was the first time ever for me, but he exaggerates. Besides I was still suffering from frostbite. We did expend quite a bit of energy thinking of, preparing, and eating every gooey fattening food we could create.

The day after New Year’s we celebrated finally having reached 2008 by going to a movie. We saw National Treasure 2 and enjoyed it. Because it was finally time to get back to missionary work we did go to the grocery store.

January 3 we finally ran out of excuses and got back to work.

January 4 the Elders have been here all day. We have a new Elder named Elder Lindsey. This is his first area after training and he’s quite delightful. We were surprised at Zone Conference that Armajo was transferred. He only spent one transfer here.

Since we’ve returned to the missionary world we’ve had 4 calls for rides to various places, one person who came over to use our phone, and a call from Salt Lake about getting in touch with the Bonitos about more translating. They wanted them to translate for the Worldwide Training on February 2 but they can’t go.

Our New Year’s resolution is to only work 6 hours a day 7 days a week. It should be interesting to see how long it takes us to break that resolution.