Merry Happy Christmas Folks!

   Well Merry Christmas everybody! Coming live from the home of Jarvisburg Historic School for Colored Children, it's Elder McMullin! If you have any Christmas merchandise or Lego sets, feel free to send them my way, and I will happily get back to you! But, without further ado, here we go!

   The work this week was certainly special. We found 3 people, one of which is actually solid. However, none of them actually came to church, so yay. Dan was gone this week as well, meaning Ann the Eternigator was all our Sacrament Attendance rested on. The highlight had to be on Friday, when we had an Albermarle exchange. Jokingly, they called an old referral with an atrocious voicemail, but she actually picked up! Elder Walker did his best, but got stuck explaining the BOM, as she was horribly confused as to who wrote it. Elder Griffiths then tried to pick pick up the pieces, but only made it worse. So, then I swing over and try to patch it, and it seemed to work! We love a 3-way flow, and it meant 1 new person for them and an ego boost for me. 

   In other news, it was interviews! This one was real boring for me, as President and I mostly just chatted about Albermarle as he hunted for compliments about Zone Conference. It was still 15 minutes, but waaay more low-key than some others (*cough cough* first week as a DL). Driving to Virginia nearly killed poor Elder Griffiths though, so glad we don't have to go back until the 26th. 

    As far as Christmas goes, the ward has been amazing. Whether balloon animals or Elder Griffiths previous work with the ward did it, we have been showered with gifts. I alone have a chocolate box, 2 gift cards to Food Lion and Wendy's, 2 new pairs of socks, and 2 full pans of turkey with more potentially coming. The people down here are just a different level of kind, and I hope we can repay them by getting Dan baptized.

   To explain the title line, we ran into an aggressively Vegan man. He was staring wistfully at the ocean like it had claimed his loved one decades ago when we invited him to church. He agrees, then goes on a ramble about how he loves to explore religion as "it's all the same". At this point, a JW spawns in and throws a pamphlet at him yelling about how he needs to learn about the true gospel. He then forces all three of us to stay by asking us "what was the first commandment?"E. Griffiths fires off the law of Moses, I reply with "don't eat the fruit" and the JW comes up with " multiply and make babies". Apparently, we were all wrong, as the first commandment was to eat fruit and nothing else. According to him, man only started eating animals to get big muscles (for vanity purposes) and if you eat exclusively fruit, then the light that runs your brain will become clearer and you'll start seeing "things". As far as I reckon, the only light he was seeing was the flame at the end of a blunt for the crap he was shoveling at us. But! We managed to slide away while he bashed the JW, and we have a shiny new red dot in the Book!

   All jokes aside, this has been an amazing week up to Christmas. A goal we had as a mission was to "play our best", to give an offering worthy for a King, much like the little drummer boy and Magi did. Although the work is slower than we would like, we have done our best to lay some great gifts at the feet of that Holy Babe. As the big day comes, I would invite all of us, me included, to think of how we can better give gifts to God at this time of giving. He doesn't want multicolored toys or semi-helpful white elephants. He wants you. As we remember some great gifts many years ago, never forget that you too are a gift to God. He loves you, he anxiously expects you, and I would dare say he would wait all night just like we do to see his gifts be delivered. Never forget your worth, and just how much of a present we are to God- so much that he would give the Light of the World, the Messiah, the one and only Babe of Bethlehem to allow us to return to him. 

With all my warmest Christmas Wishes,

Elder McMullin

Photos!

1. a bird pooped in my hair

2. We somehow lost the competition for "largest Christmas tree". Rigged.

3. It has been these WoW-pushing sandwiches for like a week.

4. Festive Lil houseboat.

5. Whaddia know- a crappy purple scion!