Early Christmas

Zone Conference

Hey! Guess what I got this week?? A Christmas package from my dear family! :D Wow, I can tell you, I was VERY excited to rip that puppy open! And to my delight, you all WAY out did all of my expectations! There's been many times these last few days where I've been saying "Wow, mom and dad NAILED it! This is PERFECT!!" We've listened to my favorite Christmas song (Carol the Bells) probably around 10-15 times already... haha it's great. Thanks for all the wonderful western goodies too. I had to resist eating that whole bag of dark chocolate berries in one day! :) And Elder Thompson really loved the tie you sent too! He's very particular with the ties he wears, and he says the tie you sent is so good that it's going into his "post-mission" ties stack! I dare say, this is probably the best Christmas present I've ever gotten, so thank you very much. :)

This week I got to attend a wedding! It was SO funny! hahaha ohhhhh arranged marriages... they are a funny, funny thing. These two people have barely even known each other, and now they are getting married! It was so much fun to see how awkward the guy looked. It reminded me of the awkwardness the first time I went on a date... just totally awkward, and not knowing what to do. You could tell he was VERY uncomfortable putting his arm on her shoulder for their pictures. haha ohhhh fun stuff...

Yesterday at church was our branch's primary presentation. I thought the primary presentations in the USA were hilarious, but I was DYING yesterday! There were only 3 girls that did 90% of the presentation (one little boy bore his testimony also), but each one of the 3 girls gave like 2 or 3 talks, sang all of the songs, and each went up and bore their testimony. My favorite part was seeing how every time they would go up to give one of their short talks, they would ALWAYS start by saying "Good morning my dear brothers and sisters", even after they have already gone up two or three times already, and already said good morning to us... haha it's semi doctrinal though here in India to start your talks that way though. I always think it's hilarious when people that don't know English start their talk like this, "Good morning my dear brothers and sisters... Telugu Telugu Telugu" Every member of the branch knows at least those 7 words of English. :)

It kind of reminds me of the silliness in America where people say "for those of you that don't know me, my name is..." even though they were introduced before they started their talk, AND their name is in the program! haha, funny.

These past few weeks we have stopped eating at restaurants for lunch, and have started cooking inside. As we eat our lunch, we've been watching church videos that we have lying around the apartment (mormon messages, the District, the Testaments, etc.) Two things that I've thought of as we do this. One, I think of what I did during my lunch breaks at college. I would usually either get on Facebook while I was eating, or watch some quality Drake and Josh, or some other similar show. What a change from watching Drake and Josh, to watching videos about Jesus Christ! A very good change though, that's for sure.

The second thing I thought of is when we were watching the District videos (which is a documentary of some missionaries in California). Whenever Elder Thompson and I watch the segments of the elders we just think "Are you kidding me... have these guys even read Preach My Gospel before??" But then as we watch the segments with the sister missionaries we think, "Are you kidding me... how are they so good?!?!" I also recently learned that lat year, the highest baptizing missionary in our mission was not an elder, but a sister. And that's especially amazing when you think of the fact that we have 80 elders, and only 8 sister missionaries, so STATISTICALLY an elder should be the highest baptizing missionary. I'm beginning to think more and more that God lowering the age for sisters to go on missions was the single biggest action to hasten the work of salvation!

Little sister (Abbey), I really hope you go on a mission some day, because we definitely need more champs like you!

Have a great Thanksgiving break! Enjoy your American feast; I'll probably go to an all you can eat rice buffet. :)