To start off this email, here's the next of my favorite tradition/memory!
Last week, I mentioned how the Christmas Eve nights go. Now I want to say how they start! As I'm sure many families do, my family has always acted out the Christmas Nativity. Which is one of my all-time favorite stories. That was always something special and a good reminder of what Christmas is really about. My parents have always done a great job of implementing this reminder into Christmas. After dinner, it was always a quick clean up and get ready for the Nativity! The excitement and rushing around to find clothes with everyone for the Nativity was always a thrill! The usual throw a towel on our heads and get a robe to wear has been the go-to. And when my Mom would narrate using the scriptures, that always gave a certain Christmas feel that nothing else could give. The Nativity will always be one of the greatest stories ever, and for good reason. I love it so much!
This week was fantastic!!! We had interviews and later that day, I went on divisions again with the other American Elder in my district of four (to my area, yes!). I have a small miracle that goes along with it. So after the interviews, the Elder and I stopped at a small shop for lunch before returning home after getting off a smaller bus, or as the natives call it, a 'combi.' We were sitting down for lunch and just before we were finished, I received a call from our zone leaders about how we needed to get some baptism records of new converts to our mission president back at the chapel we had just returned from. It was about 40 minutes away. So we had to rush back to the apartment, grab the papers, and rush back. The thing was, him and I have the same time out here in the field so neither of our Spanish is exactly up to par. All we had to do was hope we get to the right place. We knew what the area was called that we needed to get to so we were able to find a combi to take us to the right area. Except this particular combi we got was a Mexibus, so it goes to this station to drop people off. And that's where it took us, not where we needed to go. Earlier on the ride I had asked the driver how far Ojo de Agua (the area we needed to get to) was. He said like 20 more minutes. But he just took us to the station. When we got there, he told us there was another combi going where we needed to go so we got on that one. Still, the problem was, we knew what area to get to but didn't know how to get to the chapel once we got to the area. But oh well, we needed to get the papers there no matter what and we figured the Lord would help us get them there. And He did! Once we got on the bus and started talking to the driver, we found out he was actually a member! So he just took us right to the chapel. That was a nice blessing we received! The rest of the day was awesome! We picked up two future investigators who later became new investigators and got three extensions for attending sacrament meeting, and they did attend! It was just a good day overall. Lessons were great and full of the spirit. Everything all done in a little over four hours since we didn't get back until about 5pm from turning the papers in!
Tomorrow we have our Christmas zone conference and that will be a blast! During our interviews, we also found out that we are having changes early because of the big black out going on during the holidays where the church doesn't send out missionaries because of how expensive it is and how many people there are traveling. So President Parry is doing changes to get some missionaries home before Christmas, the ones that are close to leaving anyway. I guess we weren't supposed to know yet though because Sister Parry told a few of us missionaries while we were waiting for our interviews then when President Parry came out of one of his interviews, some of us started asking questions and he was like, "You guys weren't supposed to know that yet haha." But he didn't really mind so it was okay. Anyway, now we have two new baptism dates for this month and still holding on to the one we have for the first Saturday of next year!
Quick update about the Valasces family I had received revelation about from almost two months ago! The mother is now starting to go back to church, the daughter is the one who has a baptism date for January, and just last night the father just started taking lessons out of nowhere! It's truly amazing to see the gospel and atonement work in the lives of the people we love!
Sorry I can't send pictures until I get a new cord. My other one was stolen. And the other one in our apartment isn't all that great and can't connect.
But I look forward to next week's emailing!! Talk to you all soon!
-Elder Markham
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