Monday, December 28, 2015

The Most Wonderful Call of the Year

Hey Mom!

I'm glad that everybody liked my Christmas sweater, I thought it was a sweet choice too! It was good to talk to you all for a little bit, even though the video feed wasn't working on my iPad for most of it (#TechProblemsTechEldersCantFix). Yes, I even tried resetting my iPad, if you were going to tell me to try that next time. 

The day after Christmas was super cool--so Jose was getting baptized in the Naperville YSA Ward, and one of the mission rules is that you can attend baptisms, but you have to get a member to drive you, you can't drive the mission car. Being Christmas weekend, all of the members in Normal were out of town or had family in town, so they were busy. So on Friday night, we weren't planning on attending, but who would come to the rescue but SCOTT BOSWELL HIMSELF! I couldn't even believe it, that man is a saint. Like I had mad respect for him before, but when he's like, "Yeah, I'll come pick you up and take you to the baptism tomorrow" (keep in mind, Normal is like an hour-and-a-half drive each way from Naperville), I couldn't even believe it. That man deserves a special place in heaven! I could go on and on, but Scott Boswell is a stud! 

Jose's baptism was super long, because the font drained like 3/4 of the way by the time the opening exercises were over, so it took another half hour to fill the font back up part-way, and Elder Campbell had to get him pretty low in the water to immerse him completely. Scott took us back down to Normal after the baptism, and we had a really good conversation with him about missionary work!

Steve is doing really well, we taught him once this last week. We also had a Skype lesson with Bri, who is a college student at ISU that has some real potential! I'm excited to meet her in person when she gets back from Christmas break! 

The members here in Normal are amazing, we were taken care of for dinner every day this week. The Ringer family had us over for dinner, and it was really cool, because it turns out that they called all of the missionaries' moms and asked them about favorite foods and Christmas traditions that their families had before their mission. A couple of the things the Ringers did for me specifically were put together a Christmas puzzle (a tradition my family always did before my mission) and drink sparkling cider. Other foods included turkey, pork, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, green jello, salad, rolls, pie, and hot chocolate. It was a really good meal, and we sang Christmas carols together after dinner, and read the nativity story as well. The Ringers have a SWEET train that goes around their Christmas tree, something Landon would really like--there's even a Lego village that's part of the train set too!

As far as member missionary work goes, I wish members would realize how great doing the little things for missionary work really is! Like when Scott took us to the baptism on Saturday, we went to lunch afterwards, and when they handed his change back, he gave the lady a pass-along card. I mean, maybe she'll look at the card, and maybe she won't, but you never know where the card might end up, and who will be effected by it. If every member could just give out like 1 card a week, the amount of baptisms that missionaries see every year would go way up, I'm sure of it.

I love you all, and it was so good to hear from all of you guys! I'll talk to you all again soon, hope you have a great new year! I'll be celebrating by going to bed at 10:30!

Much love,
Elder Dallas Anderson
#NormalLife

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