Dear Parents, Mom and Dad/Dad and Mom,Well, congratulations on making it to school board president, even though it was not your intentions, Dad! That is quite odd, how it all worked out. I know it is a lot on your plate and that seems crazy of how much you have to do. Why is it always this season particular that life pushes everything at you? It makes it hard to remember the spirit of Christmas, sometimes. All I can say is to put God first and miraculously, for God is a God of miracles, things will work out.
So for Skyping, I gave my ward mission leader the telephone number of home and your cells. Hopefully, soon, you will get a call. I should let you know my schedule for that day, so if you want to do another time, it does not get hectic on my schedule and your schedule, thus causing even more frustration. So, Christmas, at 10 to 12, I will be at a recent convert's house. 12 to 3, I will be at the ward mission leader's house, the Hairs. (Which reminds me, I forgot to tell my ward mission leader, your names. Haha, oops.) 3 to 5, I will be at another recent convert family. 5 to 7:30, I will be a member's house. 7:30 until 9, I will be with Santa, also known as my landlord, having dessert. If you get a call from him, my ward mission leader, please ask about calling Grandma and Bria as well, because I forgot to mention that as well, more particularly Grandma, seeing as I knew I was going to be calling her. I did not know about Bria until now. And thanks for getting me a card to use to pay for calls.
I am excited to get the Christmas package, though I will wait until Christmas to open it. I am working really hard to get something out to people for this Christmas holiday. I am not getting anything, but I am writing something and then, hopefully, I will type it all up, or just kill my hand and write it out tenfold. Just like those of old. And yes, I did share with my companion goodies of the last package.
And with the ice storm, yeah, we did lose power, but only for a few hours. Our landlord woke us up to inform us of that, but I was fine, despite not having an electric blanket warming me up. I had bought another blanket, so that it can go on top of the electric blanket and keep the heat by, in theory, pushing it back. I was warm for the last three hours of sleep I had.
I am seriously losing the time. Things are going by way too fast. We had some great lessons and a lot happened this week. We helped move a lady out of the ward, in the cold. I had no idea how expensive moving trucks were until now. Sheesh. Plus, moving is a lot like a game of Tetris and it is insane. I felt bad, because you could tell how stressed she was.
One investigator, who we might be going over to Christmas, who is a husband of a recent convert, just opened up to us completely. We also have been asked a lot of questions lately, but, gratefully, the Spirit is on our side. I talked to the part member family, where the husband is deployed and the wife is Jewish, as in we were talking to the daughter about heroes from the Book of Mormon. The reason why is that the parents made an agreement to have their children exposed to both religions.
We had the ward Christmas party, which was fun. I sat with an investigator and talked to him and other members. All they served was ham, though (Seth does not like ham). They did have other side dishes, thankfully. There was no Santa, because that is the way the bishop wanted it.
But, back to the ward Christmas party. There were other performances and they were all good. There was even a sing along where people could also come up. Not many people in the crowd wanted to sing along. I joined and it was fun.
In our district meeting, I gave a training on goal setting and accountability. I talked and then the time came to do the role play, which involved my district in building marshmallow towers and accounting "why" for their success or failure, in not reaching the goal of how tall they wanted the tower they had set.
It has been a great week. I am particularly loving my studies at this time. I am reading "Jesus the Christ" and, soon, I will start the New Testament. I am realizing a lot. I even been watching the Bible Videos that recently came out. (I wish they would make more, but that is just me). But, also, I felt as though I should do a topical guide study on law, order, justice, and mercy. I had been thinking about law, order, justice, and mercy for quite some time, because that is something I realized I really love; which is considerably odd, having a creative mindset as well, which is free flowing. But, that is besides the point (there is a balance to it). In this study of which will take a lot of time, I have subtopics, which may or may not have sub-subtopics as well. It is quite fascinating, because this study encompasses a lot more that I also wanted to learn, which surprised me. I am really, really excited. A lot more growth is coming, which is considerably good, despite all the storms that may also encompass.
All is well.
Love,
Elder S. Todd
