Down in the Arkansas

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you have a very good day to celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ!  This is surely the warmest Christmas I have ever had. I was was a balmy 65 degrees yesterday and it is supposed to almost hit 70 today.  This past week has been really good. Last P Day was our mission social which was really fun. President Hansen's magic tricks are really impressive! For our gift exchange I got a plastic bow and arrow toy. With a few mods to it, it will become a formidable tool for torturing companions.  Just kidding, I'm too nice... possibly On Sunday we had the Little Rock Stake Musical Tribute, to which my aunt and uncle and grandma, who are in Memphis, surprisingly showed up to. I may not be able to see a lot of my family for two years, but is a blessing to have some of them in the mission boundaries.  Our church program was really good too. We had someone we are teaching who has been hesitant about coming to church att...

So last week I sent a picture of the parade float we helped paint. Well this past week the float went down Geyer Springs Road in Little Rock in Little Rock's Christmas parade(?), with us walking beside it handing out candy and invites to our upcoming musical tribute. Well, the float won first place in their parade float competition! Last year they didnt even know they did a competition for it apparently, and still won. So now The Church of Jesus Christ is back to back parade float champs. Hurray, I guess. And no, I do not know what the prize is. We also had Zone Conference this past week. Because of the busy month, we combined with the North Little Rock zone. We talked a lot about the new handbook. We will be implementing the new changes on January 1st. Honestly the changes aren't that substantial.  In other missionary work we're still going out and talking to people. We have a small teaching pool right now, but its fixing to get bigger! Glad because it's start...

The Christmas spirit has definitely distilled upon us as the dews from heaven. We missionaries have been busy with all sorts of Christmas service and events.  Firstly, it started with the Little Rock Stake's nativity festival. A large portion of the week was spent preparing for and attending that. We had somewhere around 100 nativities from all around the world, with a couple dozen Christmas trees, a live nativity, live musical numbers, a quilt room, a Light the World room, and a children's activity room (where we spent a good deal of time coloring).  We also had a Musical Tribute for the North Little Rock Stake. I've talked about the previous musical tributes and this was more or less the same. I really liked it. I will be at 2 more, one in Little Rock for our stake, and one in Searcy.  Pics (almost all of these are from the Nativity Fest) 1) Elder Smith and I  2) Baby Jesus and I  3) The Quilt Room. Usually the Relief Society Room ...

I hope everyone had a good thanksgiving. We sure did. We had 4 separate thanksgiving meals (not all on thanksgiving day). It was very tasty. We helped out at the local First United Methodist Church and their thanksgiving meal. I saw some people we have knocked into or seen around Benton. One man we reconnected with at the meal was a man Elder Critchfield and I met a couple months ago. Then he was homeless and jobless. As simple missionaries we are unable provide much in the way of helping him but we had a good long chat, gave words of encouragement, and prayed with him. At the meal he was saying he has since rebounded from his situation and has a place and job. He never gave up!  On friday we participated in a quintessential Arkansas activity: the leaf burning. Why buy a bunch of yard bags and dispose of leaves through the garbage system when you could just burn them? Arkansas has figured it out, and so now everyone, around late summer and fall, participates in the yearly burni...