Monday, December 26, 2016

Week 43: Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!!! I hope you were all able to have a lovely Christmas day! And Christmas Eve. And Boxing Day today since that is a thing! We had a pretty good Christmas, I have to admit.

Our week started off by heading to York for p-day where we mostly sang to practice for our various musical items that we were doing in the next 24 hours. We then all headed off as a zone to do some Christmas caroling again in York city center. That was pretty fun. Not as cold this time thankfully. We then slept on the floor again... Can't wait till that becomes a less frequent thing for me... But we then got on the coach, continued to practice all of our musical numbers, and headed to Billingham! So fun. The Christmas social was a blast, loved it so much. We started it out by breaking into groups and rotating through various games and activities that the senior couples were running. We then all got together for the entertainment part of the day... Which each zone went through and did about a half an hour of performing. It was so fun. Some people did songs, one guy did a hilarious stand up comedy routine, there was some dancing and lip syncing, there were a couple of little skits, some rapping and guitar playing. Our zone mostly just sang, there are a lot of singers in my zone. It was pretty fun. From there, we set up a very lovely Christmas dinner that we all had together. It was catered by this place that did the most amazing pulled pork sandwich I have had in a long time. So good. We of course also had Christmas crackers, so English! From there, we took a group photo because we always do. Santa and Mrs. Claus also came to visit, that was really fun. We then had a cute little nativity and then we all had to head home! Man, good thing I like traveling. Basically, this whole past week we visited a lot of members. Tried to bring a lot of Christmas cheer to people. We also were given a lot of gifts from people, which I was so surprised about. People are so kind and giving! So grateful for their kindness. Christmas Eve was so much fun. We went to M's home and not only ate, but helped her prepare a really great Christmas Eve meal. I love when I go to their home. She does such good food with so much flavor. Some of the meal was typical Christmas, a stuffed turkey. We also did this amazing dish of chicken and vegetables and cheese and hard boiled eggs and this really great garlic butter sauce... It was amazing! And she also took really green bananas, chopped them into big pieces, fried them, and then smashed them with a rock to make these chip sort of things that we then put really fresh and delicious guacamole on. Sorry if a lot of this email is about food... I love food and I had a lot of really good food this past week. So sorry for that random focus. But yeah. We had a good Christmas Eve. Christmas day! We slept in... Opened some presents! Went to church. We had a shorter service where we just sang a lot of songs and had some readings from the Christmas devotional in between. It was really lovely. Because not that many people showed up for church that day, Sister Majc ended up playing again and I once again lead the music. Real grateful I learned how to do that. It was a really great service. I love talking about the real meaning of Christmas! After church, we got picked up by a taxi with a couple of other members and headed off to the Brooksbanks for a wonderful Christmas meal! That woman is amazing. So much food. She had done 5 separate meat dishes alone. Just crazy. We really enjoyed our time at her home. Played some silly games, ate way too much once again... Good thing the new year is coming up! Any of you have any good New Year's resolutions?? I'm not really sure yet myself... But yeah... Hope you are all having a brilliant Christmas holiday and I will email you all again next year! ;) Love you!!! Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!!!

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