Called to Serve: Christmas Pics and The Eternal Everyday

Dear Everyone-

Hey!! It was so wonderful to see you all! I was on cloud nine for the rest of the day, it was lovely. :) To be completely honest, I'm not entirely sure what to write you- I kind of shared just about everything on Wednesday. So, this will be a rather random email with little bits that I'm kind of just throwing out at you. But, I hope you enjoy it. Mainly, it was lovely to see you on Christmas. I was glowing when I came out. Thank you.

In answer to Dad's question- No, I didn't have a negative backlash after seeing you. To be completely honest, I think spending two years away at school really helped me on that score. I've known a lot of missionaries who lived at home before coming out, and leaving their families was a lot harder. I've had nothing but positive experiences, and I actually talked about it all during a lesson on Thursday. We had dinner with a member family, and afterwards we did a lesson on love at home (the Grandma's request- ;) ). I talked about how sometimes I felt that 9 people was a lot of people to get a long with, and it was really hard, but now I'm on my mission I am so grateful for you and all of your support. Then everyone went around and said one thing they liked about the person sitting next to them. It was kind of funny to see two sisters who weren't too happy with each other trying to come up with something with out actually admitting that the other was nice. LoL- reminds me of some great times we had. But, I was super happy that I got to Skype with you, I love the fact that I have so many voices cheering for me, and I love feeling your support. I feel it every time we email, when I Skyped with you, and every time I talk about you. But I don't feel a let down afterwards, and I am so grateful for that. I love you all so much. I hope you feel my love just as much as I feel yours, because I feel it a lot.

After Christmas, we went to Christine's house. She is a recent convert and she is absolutely incredible. I love her. Her husband is in Afghanistan, so it was just us three. It was a neat ending to a great Christmas.

Thank you Mom and Dad for your emails. They were both incredible. :) LoL- its kind of funny to think about where every one was just a year ago. There have been a lot of big things happening. I actually am going to print off both of those emails- they were incredible. Thank you.

Random bit- My Mission president sent us this poem:

“The Eternal Everyday:”

O, one might reach heroic heights

By one strong burst of power.

He might endure the whitest lights

Of heaven for an hour;--

But harder is the daily drag,

To smile at trials which fret and fag,

And not to murmur--nor to lag.

The test of greatness is the way

One meets the Eternal Everyday.

I really love it. :) I hope you enjoy it too. Mom and Dad are excellent at making super wise comments, so I'll just let them decide what they want to teach y'all about it. In the meantime, I just love it, and I thought I'd share it with you.

Anyways, I hope you have a great week. I love you so much!! You are amazing!!

Dad asked for more pictures, so I'm sending a bunch of pictures. I guess I could just explain most of them.

Shepards from the Christmas Festival last week, and a bunch of other stuff from the Christmas Festival. Sister Warren is the awesome sister I had the opportunity of hanging out with all evening. :) She is great. There is also couple of pictures of the train I guarded valiantly for 5 hours.

At the Vergara's, we did the Nativity... :) It was probably the funniest Nativity I've ever seen. They got a script off the internet... and Whoo! Who knew you could have so much dramatic interpretation from Luke!??! I also appreciated Elder Fredrickson who was the pirate shepherd.

Sister Nokes and I Christmas morning. Harrold gave us Auburn t-shirts, so we wore those to bed Christmas Eve and woke up all stylish in bright orange. :)