Feliz Navidad. 6 months.

I need a nap. Last Zone Conference, President asked us to commit to doing one thing. “Make memories this Christmas.” It's been amazing.

Christmas Eve, just a couple people came, but stayed the whole evening and we went through every Christmas song in the Hymn book. I wouldn't have been able to do it without the warm up of caroling to less actives and the homebound all week, bringing them banana bread from our awesome ward mission leader.

There was a happenin arts n crafts party at the Senior Couple apartments till 11pm, so we were hyper by the end of the evening and stayed up late and then got up at 5:30 to go to a breakfast at the visitor center in the morning. Sister Williams sang Cantique de Noel, she's German and speaks every language on the planet and her parents are opera singers, so it was memorable. Then we all swapped gifts and I should have known my companion was my secret Santa. I'm so clueless. She gave me lip gloss (subtle hints :-).

We went home opened presents...sure 'nough, they were Peruvian. My companion was jealous, her gifts came from the Gap. Ha! We made cookies and went to visit a lady from the ward in the rest home. She was super sweet and was sad because she couldn't get up. We sang with her and were singing one more song as we were leaving the building, but the orderly marched up to us and asked us who we were with and told us to follow her. She led us into a cafeteria with at least a hundred people and asked us to sing again. No pressure. Then we went to another cafeteria. Then
another. Then a little plaza. Then a few more people's rooms, so we put on an impromptu concert to an entire facility yesterday. That was memorable.

Calling Mom and Dad was great, sorry I didn't have enough time to call all the siblings. Too much to say. I'll just have to write. I want to hear Benjamin's voice. Somebody, send me a tape or a sound byte or something.

We went back to the visitor center and a family gave us a concert. Christmas afternoon and the VC is dead and I'm thinking of starting a movie, when a 14-seater Mormon Attack Vehicle pulls up with a big family. I say “Welcome to the Mormon Visitor Center.” Grandma says. “We're Restorationists.” A little staunch, but her kids were nice and her son and I talked all about missions as the rest of the family looked at the nativities. He seemed like he would like to know more, but not with
Grannie around, but he offered to sing me a song...um, okay. They're an A Capella group and the whole family sang a gospel song for the missionaries in like 20 part harmony. Elder Dana made me run out to see if they'd made a CD he could buy. They said they'd like to record, but with that many kids, it's money they don't have, so if anyone's looking for a good investment opportunity, lemme know.

We watched “A Labor of Love.” Hehehe. We ate Ramen. I studied the scriptures a bit, ate some of the other sisters leftovers...got fatter. Then 3 families arrived at once and I took the hispanic one. They're more fun. It ended up being a 3 hour tour, because they were movin slow and wanted to see everything. So I mostly talked with an older gentleman from DF/Monterrey about the visitor center at the temple in Mexico City and the geography of Chiapas and the Rojas family, because everyone knows
them, and linguistics and it was just great to be talking to someone on the same page as me. Especially, since I couldn't call Kellen. Heavenly Father knew I needed that conversation.

We went to a later Dinner at one of the Senior couple's homes and got to bed late, once again...they're such party animals. We love em. We're off to laundry and then straight to la cama. I hope you all had very Merry Christmas and find lots of missionary opportunities in the new year. Feliz Ano Nuevo! See ya next Christmas!

Hermana Deb

Hola Familia!

Bienvenidos al Centro de Visitantes! I have officially given 2 tours! Woo hoo! It's a very nice place to be around the holidays, but it's also the most dead it's been all year, because it's not close enough to Christmas yet and a lot of people came to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, including myself, last month. So I have lots of time to study up on my church history and the millenium for the future hordes of tourists we're going to get in the summer. I've been using the Thomas Grover stories, thanks. They're good, because they make it more personalized and so people are willing to talk a bit more about their family. When did Thomas Grover join the church? Was he here?

Mostly people are coming into see the “around the world” nativity stuff downstairs, which isn't considered a tour, so I was successful once in catching a couple on the way out and taking them through God's Plan For His Family. That was neat, and they were really happy they went through it. It's kind of like fishing...the director puts on the bait (the nativities, the dead sea scrolls, etc), then you wait a long time, then they take the bait and I go introduce myself and really play up the history tour or the temple tour to see if we can actually teach them something about the church. Last night I succeeded in taking some older women on a history tour from the Nativity room and afterwards one of them said,“I worked at a Christian bookstore and we sold those big Mormon Bible combo things and so I knew a little bit, but I was never willing to learn more because I thought Joseph Smith was seen as being higher than Jesus or something. But most of the Mormons I met have pretty nice and they always have a good peaceful kind of aura going for them. But that was great, because I didn't realize it IS a Christian church. Neat. I'm glad we did that.” *warm fuzzies*

I've been doing a lot of practice tours and we do have some Spanish families in our ward. We did a family home evening for one of them the other day. The ward here is awesome. Super duper excited about missionary work. The area is pretty disorganized as far as the area book goes and we don't really have a good map...kind of a problem for me. Visitor Center sisters get transferred through apartments and areas a lot faster it seems, so I feel bad we can't devote more time to the ward. It seems like if a ward is doing this well in it's member missionary work it deserves full time missionaries. Our dinner calendar fills up the first Sunday it goes around, but we only get to go to half of the dinners. The rest have to be dropped off at the vc, because we're on shift. So I miss working with the members every evening and getting to know them and helping them in their missionary projects. I miss knowing who everyone in the ward is. I want to call the relief society prez today, but I'm not sure what her name is.

Fefe hake? Sai pe. Alu ki fe? Aluoku. “How are you?” good. “Where you going?” Study.

So there's a lot of Tongans/Somoans in our ward. Our bishop is Bishop Fuiamono. That's why I don't know the Relief Society President's name, it's like 20 syllables long. I'm trying to start learning Tongan from Sister Lasalosi. She started teaching me in the MTC. It's coming in handy. So we get big polynesian meals on a regular basis and somehow baked goods magically appear in the “guides room” every afternoon. I don't know who puts them there, but I'm becoming Hansel and Gretel paranoid. Most sisters here have packed on approximately 15 pounds since entering the visitor center. I've started to notice a difference, since leaving my biking area full of granola eating college people. Yesterday the baked goods pixies left Cinnamon rolls...this is getting serious.

Bummer that my package went to Sister Cameron instead. I'll be happy to get whatever's left in a couple months when she hands it over at Zone conference :-) The little photo book was cute though. I missing Benjamin's cute years. I was going to send home some photos last week and forgot to buy stamps. Then I dumped water all over my desk this morning, they got damp, but they're okay. I guess I'm not in a big hurry to send them now that Mom's in CHINA! That's so funny.

Life is good here in the mission. There's lot's of work to be done. Our week is pretty much booked up. That's never happened before. It's a neat feeling. Love you all. Have a great Christmas and as you stress out about all the Christmas shopping you've got to get done, remember the story of the Nativity. It was a busy night in Bethlehem. Make sure there's room left in your heart for Christ.

Season's Greetings,
Hermana Deb

Ofu atu!