Sunday, January 6, 2013

Letter #14: Merry Christmas

The past couple days, it FINALLY started to feel like December! We pulled out our long sleeves, turned on the heat, and got all bundled up in the mornings during studies....
...and then today it's in the 70s again. Oh well.


Yeah, definitely can't believe it's Christmas Eve today...mainly because it does not feel like December. But Christmas is also usually a time of laziness for me...in Christmas breaks past I've usually done a lot of lounging around, watching pointless TV, and blogging/pinteresting/facebooking. So the fact that our days as missionaries really don't change even though it's the holidays makes it not seem too Christmasy.


The ward members have been SO kind to us as missionaries. Our "feed the missionaries" box at church was loaded with Christmas bags full of treats. We now have an exorbitant amount of goodies in our apartment...in my post-mission life I'll probably give the missionaries some celery at Christmastime...

We also had a handful of people invite us over to their houses for Christmas Eve/Christmas, which was kind. Unfortunately it's a tad bit stressful trying to figure out how we're going to get to all these members, who are very spread out across the mission boundaries. We only have a limited number of miles allotted to us each month and this month we are really struggling. We've actually been on bikes almost every day since the 12th. We're currently trying to muster up the courage to call our mission president and ask him if we can sleep at the church tonight to make it easier. That would be a lifelong dream fulfilled...what kid HASN'T wanted to sleep at the church?! Oh...wait...no one? It's only me? Okay....

Yup, we've been riding our bikes a lot. I actually really like being on bike. Port St. Lucie is such a beautiful place and we get to see it better on bikes. Luckily, most of the people we're teaching are within a 3-mile radius of us, so we haven't had to bike too far...and obviously we take the car for longer trips. I still haven't mastered the art of being able to mount or dismount my bike gracefully and I manage to get scratched up quite a bit. Kind of embarrassing. Whatev.

Last week I forgot to write about our flat tire! We pulled into the parking lot outside our investigator's house and all of a sudden, our tire started deflating. We didn't have time to deal with it right then, but when we came out of the house our tire was completely flat. Neither one of us had actually changed a tire before...but we're empowered women (Candace, please imagine me doing the hand signal I always make when I say that) and so we pulled out the instruction manual and got to work. We were actually doing pretty well--I managed to figure out how to jack up the car all by myself and Sis Sheffield got the hubcab off! But then we could not for the life of us loosen those darned lugnuts. So some guy came out and helped us. We were actually pretty disappointed that we didn't get to change the tire all on our own. But...now I know how to change a flat tire. Yay. :)


Honestly, nothing too drastic or exciting this week. The elders have baptized for the last 4 weeks in a row and so it's kind of frustrating that we haven't had any baptisms this month. We have one scheduled for this wekeend though...if Roger can stop smoking by then (and I have total confidence that he can), he'll be good to go! Feel free to send up a prayer for him if you want. A highlight of the week was going to the (fanciest) relief society Christmas party I have ever attended. It was at the most beautiful (and biggest!) house I've ever been in! The house was right on the ocean and had a breathtaking view. Standing outside their back door and looking out at the ocean, I was like Yeah, I could TOTALLY live in Florida. SO gorgeous.


Well, hope you are all having a merry Christmas! Remember just how blessed you are. We've met a lot of people out here who are just really struggling and won't be able to "afford Christmas" this year. We've put together a lot of Christmas presents that we're going to be delivering tomorrow to people, so hopefully we can brighten a few people's days. :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!


love&kisses,

sister dougal

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