Christmas on a Mission

This week was my first Christmas on the mission!  It began pretty normally with trying to meet and contact various people.  Early in the week we managed to have a great lesson with Poppy where we talked about several of her concerns and how to help her move past them.  We also got to talk to a lot of less active families, as well as bake chocolate rolo cookies that we delivered to the people we met with on Christmas Eve.  The work itself was a bit more slow this week, but that was because of several reasons including a zone conference and Christmas.

On Thursday we had to wake up early and drive about one hundred miles down to Roseburg for a zone conference.  The meeting talked about subjects like the Priesthood, temple marriage, and several other things.  We then got to come back around seven pm, and the day was already done, which threw a dent into our plans.  On Christmas Eve we delivered all of the cookies that we baked as well as had a nice dinner with a family whose son is also on a mission.  We then went to the church and participated in a zone testimony meeting through Skype.

Christmas itself was awesome.  We woke up, opened up our packages and got to read all of the various letters we had.  We then went to church where the branch presidency forgot their program so they improvised the meeting for awhile.  The branch had fun with it, and it was a good meeting in the end.  We then got to Skype our families, have dinner with the branch president, named President Allen, and that was the end of the day.  Then this morning we got to watch Finding Dory for an approved Christmas movie.  It was fun to see and a nice change of pace.

It has been a good week and hopefully we can help make 2016 end in a bang.  Next year is the year that I will spend completely on a mission.  Thank you for all of the support and merry Christmas and have a happy new year!

Elder Baxter

Christmas Eve present

Carlton with his companion