The Christmas tree had plenty of presents underneath it this year. They were all from you! Thank you very much for being thoughtful and for making sure I know that I am loved and remembered. Sweet! It was a good week. How could it not be with Christmas and Christmas Eve involved? We tried to proselyte a little bit but people weren't having any of it. It's impressive how rich this area is. It was 80 degrees on Christmas Eve which made it not feel like Christmas time at all! And since Christmas Eve was on a Thursday we weekly planned anyways. That is one thing I don't enjoy very much, weekly planning! If you do it well then it's super helpful but I'm not sure how to do it well and I feel like it's just bleh. Anyways, we weekly planned then worked for an hour or two and then went to the Howard's home for dinner. Super thoughtful of these people to invite us over during the holidays. Trust me, people took excellent care of us, and they will continue to do so. The Howard's had tons of family in town so it was a mad house. We started off by acting out the nativity and reading from Luke 2, then we had a "traveling meal." Just a fancier one. It's a meal that the wise men might have eaten when they were traveling. We had beef jerky, oranges, dates, nuts, cheeses, and sparkling cider. Does that sound like what wise men would eat? Kind of funny. It was heaven though. As a missionary I'm too poor to buy good cheeses, but they had bought like 10 good ones! Yuuuummy! It's also tradition in their family to open pajamas on Christmas Eve and they didn't want us to feel left out so they bought us these cool journals and hillshire farms cheese/meat sampler thing. People are way too nice to us. AND THEN they invited us to play Settlers of Catan with them so we did. It was a very fun day and night. Good people! Christmas Day was wonderful too. We woke up and opened presents which was fun. Thanks again for the time you took to get them for me. And we were planning on talking to our families at 11. For some reason we had this awful idea to just go to the church to talk to our families but that would of been so lonely and boring. Thank heavens some members saved us and invited us over for lunch and fun while we talked to our families. I had a great time talking to my family and I enjoyed it lots. It was so good to see their faces! I miss them lots but I am grateful for the family that I have been blessed to be in. They are the best! So we talked to our families at a members home and then we worked on a puzzle while my companion went and talked to his family. The puzzle was stinking hard. 1000 piece puzzle but every piece looked the exact same. We worked on it for almost 2 hours but got close to nothing done. After my companion finished we went and visited a lady named Nancy. We went by on Saturday because we dropped off our Christmas packages on that day and the post office was next to Nancy. We asked her what her plans were for Christmas and she said she didn't have any. That broke our hearts so we decided to buy cookies on p-day and take them to her and some other people we wanted to say thank you to. We took her the cookies and we made her a card and gave that to her too. It looked like she appreciated it, hopefully she did! We then started to bike over to dinner but realized it would take way too long to get there, so we got a ride. Oops! Dinner with the Herzogs was fun. They too had family in town so there were lots of people to feed. We had ham, salad, mashed potatoes, rolls, carrots, the works! And then some delicious pie to finish it off. We then chatted for a little bit and then took off to finish delivering our cookies and cards. On Wednesday we had district meeting. I can't remember if said this yet or not but our district is so lame now. We have 4 people in it. The new Hope sisters are gone and Leander Elders are now covering Leander and New Hope. A 4 person district meeting is kind of boring, but we will figure it out! It was a good meeting none the less. We have also been incredibly blessed with so many miracles. I will share my favorite one from this past week. We set up an appointment with Diana for Tuesday afternoon. We go over there and before we even knock on the door she comes running outside, looking a tad stressed. She tells us she doesn't have any time to meet right now because of some problems that have popped up with her trying to sell her house. To make a long story shorter, she is selling her house the next day, Wednesday, and everything is planned out for her stuff to be moved Saturday so she can leave on Tuesday, tomorrow. The realtor called her that morning telling her there was a lean on the house for 50,000 dollars that hadn't been paid yet. She has paid it but the check hadn't been cashed by her ex yet so it looked like it had never been paid. So either her ex helped her out or she was in serious doo doo. And it all had to be done before the following day because if it wasn't she couldn't sell the house. 73 year old woman trying to sell her home by herself, it was a mess. So we ask her if we can say a prayer with her and she says sure. She was raised Catholic so we hold hands when we pray. I think that is the funniest thing. So we make the prayer circle, hold hands, and we say a prayer. In that prayer we ask that everything will work out and that her ex will call her. She chuckles and says well hopefully that helps, not believing that her ex will call back because she thought he would be at his families already and wouldn't be able to go to his bank. She thought it was definitely not going to happen. She tells us we can come back a little later and see I of she has some time. We go and work for a few hours and then go back. We have a lesson and then after we are done we get on our bikes and start to leave. As we start to leave we see her running out of her house looking very surprised. I was excited because I thought she was going to tell us she saw an angel and she wanted to be baptized, but that was not it. She comes over and tells us that she went inside and there was a message on her message machine from her ex saying he would go to the office and take care of it. She then told us it was a miracle and the prayer was answered. As she starts to go back inside she says, "I believe a little bit more and now I'm worried about myself!" Pretty cool huh? We also stopped by a LA guy and his family who was baptized but knows absolutely nothing about the church or what we believe. He let us right in though and we shared some scriptures and talked about the doctrine of Christ. He was so nice to us. He then fed us, we didn't have much of a choice in the matter! Did I tell you this already? How would that even be possible? I think I did somehow... About the weather... Your prayers to keep me safe were answered!!! On Saturday night it started to get really windy and dark. It didn't start raining though until we were in our beds, safe and sound. Sunday morning was just super rainy and windy and really cold, and that was on and off all through the church. When we went home from church it was fine, we then had lunch and we biked and the storm was held off while we biked and proselyted. We then had dinner with some members. As soon as we start to share our message it starts raining, but the rain is super loud, louder than normal. We then go and look outside and it's hailing. These pieces of hail are the size of small stones, and it was just ice falling from the sky. And the it started to downpour with thunder and lightning. So the members took us home and we did some planning for the rest of the night. It was eventful. And yes, we were kept safe. But now it's like 5 degrees outside, it went from 80 to 5 in the span of 3 days. Texas has some crazy weather! Great week! I would just like to say how much I love the Book of Mormon. It is the best book ever written! Study it often! Love you all lots! Sincerely, Elder Christensen A random couch in the middle of no where, we had to take a picture!
A gold calf in the middle of someone's yard, only in Texas.
Annnnnd a cool tree...
