Christmas Can Still Live in Your Heart

What a week! I've got to tell you, I have had like the best Christmas ever.

 

Wednesday evening we had our English party/Ward Christmas party and it was CRAZY. It was like the biggest party I've ever helped put on. We expected like 50 people to come, maybe, and we ended up with 120 PEOPLE. The room was so packed. But it was so fabulous! We had the greatest decorations, including a cardboard fireplace with red rectangles glued on it in a brick pattern, and we made gingerbread houses (so funny. these Asians have never made gingerbread houses before so they didn't realize that the icing has to be made so that it hardens and the candy was not your regular gumdrops and candy canes, but everyone loved it.) and the best part, we put on a live Nativity. In December's Liahona magazine they had a script of how to help your children put on a Nativity so we did that, and since it was English class we aske the ward member to memorize their parts in English. So we had the missionaries do the narration and the ward members (with homemade costumes) act it out, while I played little musical interludes on the piano. My absolute favorite was Joseph, who got so into his part: "Please! There must be some way you can help us! My wife is about to have baby!" n his cute Chinese accent. Love it. Best Christmas party ever.

 

Christmas day was awesome as well. In the morning I woke up a few minutes early and played some Christmas music to wake up my companion, then we opened our presents and made a wonderful Christmas breakfast, including French Toast with maple syrup, fruit, sausage, and orange juice. Then we headed out to a member's house, Sister Zhuang, and used her Ipad to Skype with our families. That was so great, I loved getting to talk to my family. They are awesome. Then we went out to lunch with Zhuang Jie Mei (members are so generous! But I don't understand the thing where people eat meat that is like all bone and hardly any meat). Then we went tracting in the rain and wished everyone a Merry Christmas. In the evening the Bishop treated all of us missionaries to a restaurant where you order a steak and then there's an all-you-can-eat buffet with it. It was delicious. In the evening we had a gift exchange thing with some members then an awesome lesson with Taco. Then we had a crazy miracle; a girl named Claire who had come to the Christmas party called us and asked if we could meet with her, and I was going to set it up for a couple days later but she was like, "Can we meet tonight?" so we had a miracle lesson at like 8:30 at night. Seriously, the paragraph I just wrote includes like all of the things that could possibly make a missionary happy save someone walking up to you holding a white jumpsuit and asking where the font is.

 

So that's pretty much all I have to talk about this week! We have been working hard and biking a lot and trying to help people feel the Christmas spirit. We have hope for Claire and Taco (who says that baptism sounds like a big responsibility but she'll come around) and Sister Chen, which is awesome. We have figured out how to have hot water to shower with in the mornings (this has been an experiment over the week; turns out if you have two faucets going it will be hot, which means you have to turn off the washer and have both of us shower at once, or the washer and one shower, or one shower and one sink. Or you could put the stove on.) On Friday someone told me that the way I hold chopsticks is very good, like the standard way that chopsticks should be held. I knew I was Asian at heart.

 

I'm so glad that I was able to be here for Christmas, in the situation where I can realy focus on the Savior. I know that besides all of the fun activities and Christmas cheer, the most important reason we have Christmas is to remember the Savior and all he gave to us. All week I've been wanting to share this quote from a talk by Robert D Hales in the December 2013 Ensign, and hey now I have a chance to share it!

 

"Christmas is a time to share our gifts, strengthen others, and do our part in the kingdom of God. Christmas is also a time to express our love to others and to bear our testimony of the Savior."

 

I hope this Christmas (okay it's already past but Christmas can still live in your heart) you have a chance to share with someone your testimony of the Savior.

 

Love you all!

Sister Cardon