Christmas!!!

Thursday:

It's weird starting on a Thursday, but here we go. Big thing of the day... there's this candy I REALLY like called Reeses Fastbreaks. Every single time I go to a new store, I check all the candy areas for them. I have checked dozens of stores in Massachusetts and Conneticut and never found them. But we had a pre-Christmas miracle. Elder Bilar was out of shampoo, so we went across the street to the dollar tree, and as we were checking out, I saw them! I made Elder Bilar buy 4 of them and they are just as great as I remember. That night we had exchanges. I was with our district leader, Elder Parish. He's a super cool guy, and we actually met in the beginning of my mission. We didn't have a busy night, so we just talked for a couple of hours. The Christmas season is pretty weird for missionaries, so it was nice to relax a bit. 

Friday:

Christmas!!!! It was a really fun day, but here's one funny thing. Last Thursday, it snowed, and again on Sunday. About 18 inches in all. We have been trudging through snow all week. Then, we wake up and all of the snow is gone! Disappeared! Apparently, last night it got really warm and rained and melted all the snow. So every other day, except Christmas, was white- haha! Anyways, it was a great day. We woke up and got ready, then opened all of our presents, taking turns. The other elders went first, because they got 2 giant stockings from their ward plus some big FedEx boxes, haha. It was great, and I got everything I needed! We wanted to play spikeball with the other elders, but we had to go to a Christmas zoom call with our district. And when we finished 2 hours later, the other elders had theirs! So it was dark by the time we finished, haha. So we just called all of our families, and I finally got to see all my nieces and nephews. When I called Taylor, Liam was there and when he saw me he said "Jeffee! Jeffee! Jeffee's coming! Jeffee's coming!" It was so cute. It was so crazy to see how all the kids are all so big! Brooke doesn't crawl but she army crawls and is crazy fast, so it's hilarious to watch, haha. 

Saturday:

Saturday was the most productive day we have had in a while. We had more exchanges! But this time I was with Elder Moody. It was a lot of fun and we actually had 4 lessons planned. The first one was with a member in the Ward, but we also talked to Bryce and Lucca. It's so much fun talking about the Gospel with my friends. Now that I've gotten over my social fear it's really chill, and I love it. We talked about the story of Enos with Bryce. And gave the message of the restoration to Lucca. He was pretty receptive and said he would pray about it which was awesome. Our last lesson didnt go through but all in all a good day. 

Sunday:

Normally we exercise in the mornings, but not on Sunday for obvious reasons. So we have a lot of extra prep time. A guy in our ward is writing a book about his conversion story, so I spent the time reading a little bit. It's an awesome story. From there we got ready and went to church. Elder Bilar and I usually sit in the back, and he translates into a mic. I like to talk to myself and just translate as well just to practice. I was going strong when Elder Bilar needed to get his Book of Mormon, so he handed me the mic and said translate. I was pretty confident, after all I, I had been doing it the entire time. The next words out of Bishop's mouth were, "Now I'm going to let my inner English Teacher out for a moment." Then he said something along the lines of "The background of this verse helps to shed an interesting light on what his motivations may have been in this case." Then he continued to assault my head with words I didn't even know in English let alone Portuguese. Elder Bilar was back within 15 seconds, but it felt like an eternity. And I'll tell you right now that was 15 seconds of silence, because I did not say a word, haha. The English elders are moving out of our apartment so we needed to go all the way to Boston to bring them to their new car. So we spent the rest of the day on a road trip; that was a lot of fun. I had a fight with the car's bluetooth, we talked a bit with the sisters who had the car, then we headed back home. 

Monday: 

Today is our last full day with the other elders. They are really excited to leave, because they are an hour away from their area right now, but it's still sad. We decided to make our last p-day a good one by going out to a restaurant my parents recommended called The Place 2 Be. It looked really nice, so we were excited as well as nervous about the prices. We had good news and bad news when we got there. The good news is that the prices were much lower than we thought, not cheap but not too expensive. The bad news is that the food reflected that, haha. It still looked really pretty though, and it filled our stomachs. From there we went to the mall and spent a long time looking for a barber shop that wasn't there. And I bought a new sweater from banana republic. Elder Hoopes and I went to get hair cuts, and we got home and had a spikeball tourney with the boys. Finished the P-day with boneless wings and watching clips from the Chosen, a tv series about the New Testament. Not bad.