Week 7 Letter 12/31/12

December 31, 2012

Happy New Years Everyone!

Hope you have all had a good Christmas season. I have had a great time here at the MTC. We won't do anything special for the New Year but it does not really feel like it is anyway so we don't mind.

Christmas was such a good day. First of all on Christmas Eve after dinner we went to a fireside. I thought we were going to have somebody come talk to us but it ended up being a nativity. The MTC chose some Elders and Sisters to act out the Nativity. It was really fun as we sang all of the Christmas songs going along with the Nativity. After the Nativity, we watched "The Christmas Carol." I'm not sure if I have seen it before but I mostly liked it. It was kind of weird at parts but it was still fun to watch.

Christmas morning we woke up as a district and opened all of our presents. It was a fun time to be all together. Then we went to breakfast and the morning fireside. I was in the choir and we got to sing two songs for the devotional. The first was "As Shepherds Lately Knelt." It was a very inspiring Christmas song and was very fun to sing. We also sung "The First Noel" which is one of my all time favorite Christmas songs. After we sung, Elder Russell M. Nelson was our speaker. He had a very good talk and focused a lot on the three people that we should have a good relationship with in the ward: the Bishop, Ward Mission Leader and Family History Consultant. I learned a lot from his talk.  After the fireside we had some time to have dinner, go on a temple walk, and email our families. Then we went to another fireside. This one was by the painter Greg Olsen. He has some amazing pictures that he showed us. He mainly focused on how his painting had helped him come closer to the Savior. The best part of his message was that we need not distant ourselves from the Savior. He spoke of a time that he had a chance to visit with Boyd K. Packer. President Packer told Brother Olsen that when painting the savior he should look ordinary. It sounded weird at first and it did to Brother Olsen as well but the point that President Packer was trying to make was that he looked no different than any other man. He had no glowing halo around his head at all times. As Brother Olsen put it "he was a man of the neighborhood. He also focused on how we should spend five minutes a day pondering on the Savior, thinking of what we would say if we were with him. It was such a great message. The last thing we did was watch the movie "It's a Wonderful Life." It is one of my favorite movies! It was great to be able to watch it again. Hope you all had a great Christmas as well! I would be happy to hear about them!

The rest of the week was fun as usual. Hermano King was not there but we got to have Hermano Voss teach us. He is one of our favorite teachers. It was fun to have him teach us this week. We will be glad to have Hermano King back though. Elder Erekson came back as well. He came back to get his visa but won't be leaving until Thursday. It was good to have him back though. We had a big snowfall this week. It's fun to be back in the snow again but I sure won't be missing it.

We got a little news about out visas. We didn't get our travel plans this week so we went to talk to the travel office. They told us that we have to make a personal appearance at the consolate in Salt Lake. Once we go we will have our visas but other than that we don't know much.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

Have a Happy New Year!

Elder Lightheart