Happy two days after Christmas! :) That’s a holiday, right? When do they
celebrate Festivus again? Anyway, this festive week has been one of the
best one’s yet that I’ve had at the MTC-RC mission!
On Thursday, we decided that we would go bowling. Random, right? But we
went down to BYU at the WILK and the workers there explained that for
missionaries it was free to bowl, so that was pretty neat. Though while we
were bowling, they kept playing the song “Larger than Life” by Backstreet
Boys because they were filming a music video for reasons I have no idea
about. Anyway, bowling was pretty fun. Of course, I’m awful at it, but it
turns out I’m pretty good left handed and also between my legs and
backwards. See, we played an alteration where we had a cup of skittles and
each color represented a different way we had to bowl. Red was spinning
around three times, yellow was left handed, purple was backwards, green was
granny style, and orange was between the legs. It was super difficult, but
I managed to get 2nd and 3rd :) Afterwards, we headed on over to the
Creamery and I got a garden burger (now called a veggie burger) and garlic
fries. I remembered it all tasting so much better than it did, but it was
still pretty good. I think the MTC has dulled my standards of what “good
food” is, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time there and the cookies and cream
cone that I got after that. (of course instead of a single scoop that I
paid for, he gave me a couple of scoops. Being a missionary has its perks!)
Elder Hunt wasn’t too much of a fan of the fries, but the Hermanas loved
it.
Later that week on Sunday, we were invited to Brother
Ware’s house to eat a Sunday dinner. Brother Ware is sort of like our
mission president, but he isn’t.. that is President Brown. He is over all
the chats and lots of technical things about the MTC. Anyway, we had the
opportunity to eat at their house for Christmas Adam (the day before
Christmas Eve). It was super delicious! His wife is Scottish so she made
this dessert that was kind of like a german pancake, but they called it
some kind of Scottish pudding. It was pretty good both with gravy and with
honey (separately, but I’m sure it would have tasted fine together). There
were also really good potatoes and afterwards I tried my first slice of
pumpkin pie. Really loved that, (what else have I been missing out in my
life? Still hate brussel spouts…) then Elder Tucker (our district leader)
shared a message with them and so did Elder Jones and my companion. It was
pretty neat, haha. They have three children, two boys and one girl. One of
the boys is like a super genius and he was learning Spanish. They told us
it was the older one, who was named Thomas, so I started talking to the
taller one of the brothers in Spanish while we were eating. He just gave me
this blank stare for a bit and I hear this voice next to him saying, “I’m
Thomas…,” and I looked over at the shorter one of the too haha. It reminded
me a lot of Elder Schroeppel being shorter than his brother, but I was so
embarrassed! The dinner was good though and it was nice to get a home
cooked meal.
When we returned, we found that we not only got to go eat
dinner at the Wares, but the next day we had the opportunity to go to our
teacher’s house, named Brother Lund. Super lucky, right? Though we had to
miss the opportunity to watch a Christmas Carol (which apparently wasn’t
that good anyway) and also a Nativity that starred three of the Elder’s we
know as the Narrators and one of the Wise Men. Worth it. We got there and
started out by watching the Best Two Years. Now, I haven’t even seen it all
the way through, just random clips that I’ve seen other people show me, but
that movie is a lot funnier and relevant (obviously) now that I’m on my
mission. :) The part where Elder Calhoun is talking about how Elder Rogers
knew to go to the grocery store and he replies, “indigestion” which he
hears as “inspiration.” That is most definitely my companion and I. Elder
Hunt will explain to me how if we had not left at a certain time and done a
certain thing, we would not have been in the exact place and time to do so
many of the tiny miracles that keep happening. Like Commissioner Gordon
said, “You’re a Mormon now, you aren’t allowed to believe in coincidences.”
Okay so maybe, he said detective instead of Mormon, but you get the idea.
It’s the tiny tender mercies that are the flecks of gold that we should
value. Still looking for the nuggets, but I’m sure they will come with
time. After the movie, or rather, during the movie, Elder Hunt got to skype
his family, which made him WAY happy. After the movie was over, I was able
to talk and meet his family and give them a weird compliment. I told them
that I liked how all of their hair styles were parted differently. I really
did enjoy that haha. Then we ate some more homemade food. Although our
teacher went to Russia for his mission, we did not partake in the Russian
cuisine. We did however play with some of those wooden Russian dolls that
have more dolls inside of them. There was one of them that was a bunch of
BYU football players, but the biggest one was Heaps, who apparently is gone
now. This did not make the Lund family very happy haha. We had some
wonderful ham and veggies, and after the dinner we played White Elephant.
This is fun, because it used to be a Christmas tradition with my family
every year. I’m not sure why it ended, but I enjoyed doing it once more. I
received a squishy dog that lights up when you throw it on the ground. We
watched the Nativity after that and had a testimony meeting about Christ
with a bunch of the Elders who were there. The light-up dog kept lighting
up during people’s testimonies… I was told to be a light to the world, so I
think I’m still good. After that we played a game called Werewolf, which is
like Mafia. If you don’t know what either of those things are… well then.
There are three killers/werewolves, two investigators, and one doctor;
everyone else are citizens. So the point of the game is to kill all of the
werewolves, unless you are the werewolves, then it is to kill the
investigators. The different roles are decided by passing out cards, or
tapping on the head, just some signal so that only they know. Every night
the werewolves kill one person, the investigators investigate one person,
and the doctor can save one person; each one of these is done with everyone
who are not one of those roles closing their eyes at those assigned times.
After every “night” the citizens gather together and lynch someone who they
think is the werewolf. So our teacher was the wolf with another wolf, and
they sold out one of their fellow wolves so none of us thought to lynch
them, so I got pretty far to the end (I was just a citizen) but we didn’t
win. I suspected them both from the beginning, but I couldn’t round up
enough votes to get rid of them. Also, the round that I died, I tried to
signal to the doctor that he should save me, but he decided to save himself
that round haha. We ended that party with us trying their family
traditional drink of eggnog and sprite. Not as bad as you would think, but
still it isn’t all that delicious.
And that was Christmas Eve.
Christmas Day we started out with opening presents, (I’m
sure you have seen all those pictures on Facebook already. It was intense!)
I received a Batman mighty wallet and an iPod touch (that I’ve had for a
while, cause I thought I might be leaving soon… Nope!) I also got loads of
food so that I can fatten up for the winter and a Captain America shirt in
preparation for that (size XL). We played a game of Settlers of Catan (I
won). Then we headed over to the devotional that a lot of people though was
going to be the Prophet, but it turned out to be Elder Nelson (who was
awesome in my opinion). Wrote lots of notes on that one. The next biggest
thing was that I GOT TO CALL WITH SKYPE MY WHOLE FAMILY! Okay, a big
majority of my family, but it was so awesome! It seems like nothing has
really changed with any of them. Like time has stood still and is waiting
for me to return. I wonder what it will be like in 1.5 more years. We were
able to talk for an hour, but I got away with about two hours. Mostly cause
for the beginning of the chat and throughout it, I was explaining how to
do things on that chat so that everyone could see and hear me and that I
could as well of them. I’m so thankful that I’m still here starting my
18thweek so that I could talk to them on Skype for that long. I love
them so
much and I love that they took that time to do that for me. Can’t wait
until I get to call them when I leave for Argentina.
After my call, the rest of the day was filled with eating
foods of all sorts, and by all sorts I mean Hawaiian rolls with deli meats
and cheese with some chips. Merry Christmas. This night we had the
opportunity to go see “It’s a Wonderful Life” (which I’ve never seen
before) but right before we were about to leave, one of my good friends,
Elder Romero, has an announcement. He is leaving this Friday so this will
be the last time that we can do anything like this with him. So instead of
watching that movie, we stayed behind and played a few games of Werewolf. I
think it was worth it :D
So all and all, it’s been a good week. Hermana Judd (going
to Neuquén with us) got assigned a new companion last week named Hermana
Dunn, but yesterday we found out that she is leaving on the 31st. So… We’re
still here. We’ll always be here.
Love,
Elder Jordan Hanzon
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