Week 71: Christmas Cards!

Our Christmas Card

Merry Christmas everyone!!

This week was pretty awesome. Tuesday afternoon we were doing weekly planning and had no clue what we were gonna do to fill up this week. With Christmas Eve and Christmas, we knew everyone would either have people in town or be out of town, so we knew it'd be very difficult being able to meet with people. Then Elder Parker had a brilliant idea: make cards for people and drop them off. The rest of Tuesday was spent figuring out how we were even gonna do this, and finally we just went to Walgreens in AF where they had this cool kiosk where you plugged in your phone and uploaded a photo and could design your card right there. Someone also LEFT a 50% off coupon right by the kiosk so our order was half off.We had them printed in our hands Wednesday morning, and then we got to writing notes of the back of them. We planned on giving them to our missionary friends, cool families in our area, and to the people we're teaching too.

Wednesday we also had Zone Conference and go to handing out lots of the cards there too. This Zone Conference was super lit because we did a talent show after lunch. Every district had 10 minutes to do whatever you wanted, so my district decided to go all out and we did a skit. Our skit was a Christmas spin to the classic story of Nephi getting the brass plates. Nephi and his brothers had to return to "Jeru-ville" to retrieve the Christmas tree of life from the evil Grinch. I played Laman, and Elder Parker played Zoram, but in the Christmas version he was actually the Grinch's dog Max. It was really fun and the audience seemed to like it too. The best part was that Nephi vanquished the Grinch by dunking on him on a Nerf basketball hoop. His line was "It is better that one Grinch must be dunked on than an entire nation dwindle and perish in unbelief." Pretty epic.

Christmas Eve we legit just dropped of packages and cards for our zone and for people in our area. We had lots of fun doing that. We had so many places to be and people to see, and having a card for them made for a really great reason to be showing up to their house. That night we had dinner with a nice family then watched "It's A Wonderful Life" with the whole mission on Zoom. Christmas Day we opened our Christmas packages, then we had breakfast with a member family. Then we had CDC with our zone which was fun. We basically just hung out and had fun. We did a Secret Santa too, and everyone filled out a little questionaire of your favorite snacks and sodas, so the Elder that had me just got me a case of Major Melon Mtn Dews. Perfect gift. Christmas Day we continued to drop off cards and visit people, then we had dinner with another nice family and then had a Zoom devotional with the whole mission.

So yeah, basically all we did this week was hand out cards, but it was so fun. This was my last Christmas as a missionary and it's been so fun. I'm so glad that I didn't have to be concerned with finals, registration, work, or shopping. I could help other people be less concerned with those things and share with them the gospel of Jesus Christ; share with them the reason why we celebrate Christmas. The Savior lived a matchless life of service and love, and it began in a far different environment than he had come from. The little baby Jesus meant hope for a broken world, and it is a privilige to welcome him into our lives again year after year.

Pday today was epic. Pickleball twice, making for a total of like 3 hours. Bostin, one of the new guys we're teaching, came to pickleball today too and he loved it. Bostin and his family are so welcoming to us and it's like we're part of their family. We also got Chick-fil-a today too so that was epic.

Love you all! 2022 is gonna be the most epic year yet!

Elder Snyder