We had a beautiful week this week. Our mission is made up of eight zones, with about 18 missionaries in each zone. For Christmas, each zone was divided into two groups and each group was assigned to share thoughts and music about Christ in two special zone meetings. On Tuesday, we met with the missionaries who are serving in San Luis Obispo, Santa Maria, Santa Barbara, and Ventura. They spoke and sang, and the love in the meeting was really beautiful. Then on Thursday, the missionaries in Camarillo, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, and Newbury Park did the same thing. Dad and I arrived about 2 hours early to decorate tables and help prepare lunch. Then after the meeting, we served lunch to 140 cute young missionaries. We really enjoyed getting to know them, wishing them Merry Christmas, and feeding them.
As Dad and I were driving and talking about the conferences on Friday, Dad said to me, "I think you have more faith in Christ than you did before the mission." He's right! I began the mission with goals to serve (not easy to measure), become more outgoing, and to improve my Spanish. I didn't think about how I might come to feel as I served here, but truly, this experience touches my spirit, and I'm so grateful for that. The other blessing is that I can feel generous more easily. Dad and I spent the weekend visiting people we love, giving them copies of Dad's booklet and a Christmas ornament, telling them that we love them, and trying to remember all the ways we love the people we meet here.
To make the week exciting, we were invited for a Mexican celebration of Christmas at our friends, the Aparicio's home, and we had an amazing meat roll (hamburger rolled up with green, red, and yellow peppers, lots of cheese, then wrapped in probably 50 pieces of bacon and baked. When we got to the home, we saw that the door was wide open, and we felt so welcome, knowing that the Aparicios would leave the door open for us. But as the evening grew cold, they kept trying to close the door and the smoke from the meat roll would trigger the smoke alarm, thus causing them to open the door again. We had so much fun trying not to laugh and to eat that thing!
When we went to church on Sunday, the choir director had prepared a copy of the music for O Holy Night and O Come, O Come Emmanuel for each of us. We sang those two songs together like a choir, and I loved the experience and the music. Those are beautiful songs that we don't usually sing at church. It was a special day. In our other ward, too, a man created stockings for each of us with our names on them and the name of the ward on the back. We were treated like kings that day and it was very fun!
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