Christmas Comes But Once A Year

Christmas came around again, and a lot of cool stuff went down!  For P-day we went to Frankfurt to check out the Weihnachtsmarkt.  It was cool, despite the rain that was falling throughout most of the day.  At the end of the day we visited a member in a hospital, and the bishop showed up at the same time, so we were able to visit this member together.  Tuesday we stopped by a family from Syria that my companion met on a split the week before, and we were able to sit down and talk with the family.  They were very open to meeting with us, which was pretty exciting, and we are hoping for the best with this family.  We also met with another investigator and talked about prayer and at the end of the lesson he gave the closing prayer.  To finish the day we met with a less active member and talked about the Plan of Salvation.  It has been great to see the steps this member has been taking to return to the Church!

Wednesday we met with a lady who lives across the street from us.  She met missionaries in the the past, and now we are back in contact with her.  We had a member help us out and talked about the nature of God.  At the end of the day we helped the member we were with create CDs for Christmas presents.  We also learned that the member we visited in the hospital passed away.

Now, on to Christmas!  For Christmas Eve, we helped the member we were with the day before a little bit more, then spent some decent time baking brownies and cookies for an appointment in the evening.  We visited our Ward Mission Leader and his family for Christmas Eve, where we had a nice dinner, talked about the reason of Christmas, opened presents (socks and Lightsaber themed pens for the Elders!) and upon returning back to our apartment we opened our Christmas Eve presents (Star Wars Episode VII pajamas for this Elder!). Christmas day we woke up, opened the rest of our presents and our stockings, had breakfast with the other Hanau Elders and played a card game, and then we went out to visit a member family.  We started by calling family via Skype, which was really nice, and then having dinner.  The family we were with invited a man they met at a grocery store to dinner as well that evening, and we ended up talking about the Book of Mormon with this man and more or less teaching a first lesson.  It was cool to see the family involved in missionary work!  On the second day of Christmas we picked up the other Elders and drove an hour to visit a family and have dinner together.

Finally, on Sunday, we didn´t have any investigators make it to church, but it was a good day none the less.  The members talked about helping less active members return to church, and it was great to see them talking about it.  Well, that´s how I spent my last Christmas on the mission!

Christmas in Germany

Ulton checking Aaron's stocking