The Christmas Season is a time to be celebrated with fun and spiritual activities. In the mission office, though, it is lots of work as usual. In fact because of the terrible weather there is more work for Elder Arhets because of car accidents. Luckily we have had no missionaries get hurt, but can't say the same thing for the cars. Cars slipping and sliding cause a lot of damage. Just this week we have had 3 sets of missionaries in accidents.
Emily, President's daughter, goes to the Montreal Ballet School and she really wanted me to go and watch her dance on their special visitor's day. John and I went to see her. It was mostly watching the girls go through their regular practice and exercises and at the end there was a little Christmas skit. Emily is the reindeer in the middle. I have seen a lot of dance practices and a lot of ballet practices, but never one quite like this. It reminded me of the old, classical ballet schools. There were two classes, each lead by a ballet mistress. There was a real live pianists, not a tape or CD. Both of the mistresses were VERY strict. As the girls did their exercises and routines, the mistress would walk around and make little comments to the girls and tap them in various places with her little wand to make corrections. The girls were totally silent, but they seemed to enjoy their class. I enjoyed seeing it too.
Tuesday we had to go to NY for me to see the dentist again. And, we will have to go again after the first of the year because my tooth is still hurting a lot. Maybe it's a different tooth. I will have to be a detective and try to figure out what is going on. There is a brand new Five Guys in Plattsburg and it is just as good as the one in Utah. We went there and had a yummy lunch.
Today we were snowed in. Too much snow, ice pellets and dangerous roads. Church was cancelled. Our branch president called and said that we could hold sacrament in our apartment if we wanted to. We did want to and so we invited the missionaries that live in our same building and invited them to join us. John talked about four of the characteristics of Jesus Christ; consecration, faith, purity, and sacrifice. He had me read the story of Why The Chimes Rang, which is one of his favorite Christmas stories. Then he relayed the story of the widow and her mite from Mark12: 41-44 and also the story of the widow in Elisha's time from 1Kings 17; 9-16. We discussed how our goal is to develop these same characteristics and to become Christ like ourselves. We talked of how we need to live our lives, dedicating ourselves to Christ every day and throughout our entire life, not just once in a while. We all felt the spirit so strongly and I think everyone was glad that they came.
Afterwards we munched on freshly made pumpkin bread from a new recipe I was trying out and had some fun conversation. Sister Abrams, a single senior missionary, is from North Carolina. Sister Landeen is from American Fork, and Sister Laurent is from Paris, France. It was so much fun to talk to her and to reminisce about our mission to France. It turns out that she knows many of the wonderful JA's that we had the opportunity to work with and to get to know in France.
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