Three Zone Conferences, Two Talent Shows and a Crane in a Tall Pine Tree!

It is that most wonderful time of the year here in Houston and we are enjoying this simplified Christmas season where we can focus on the Savior.

We got to go to a Spanish class with the missionaries in our ward and we really enjoyed it. It is taught 

by Brother Pomeroy who is a retired Spanish teacher who also taught seminary for many years. He has worksheets in Spanish that he has the missionaries do, but he also gives them time to ask gospel questions and get answers to questions some of the people they are teaching might have. We hope to go often! By the way, the Elder in the center of the photo is holding a plate of lemon bars that he brought for the group, and they were the best we had ever had! His mother taught him well!

                                                

On one of our morning walks last week we were surprised to see our usually calm white cranes having some sort of territorial dispute and they started chasing one another into the trees. They are very entertaining!

We can't get used to the movies theaters selling alcohol - in one theater there is an actual bar with seats! That could make the movie going experience a very different one!

In our mission, they asked the parents to mark "Christmas" on the outside of the presents that they sent, then they kept track of who had packages and who didn't so that they could make sure each missionary had something when they handed them out at the Christmas Zone Conferences.

These photos are both of the mission president's office where the packages were stored. It was quite a production and the missionaries were so excited to get them!

The Toyota RAV4 is a favorite missionary car - they must be pretty indestructible! It is fun to see them lined up in the parking lot at Zone Conference. During most Zone Conferences, Elder Cluff who is a senior missionary in charge of the vehicles does vehicle inspections to make sure they are clean and maintained. 

We went to three Christmas Zone Conferences this week. This first one was for the Houston Mission - it is the closest one to our mission and we also wanted to meet the new nurse assigned to their mission (Sister Clark in the photo next to me). She has been Critical Care Nurse for many years and just recently retired - we are so excited to have her!

The next day we attended a zone conference for our mission here in Kingwood. A highlight was the talent show. In this photo you see the assistants to the president Elder Topham and Elder Nelson as MC's - Sister Hewlett found these great jackets for them!

The Summerwood Zone which we are unofficially a part of did a really fun song that was a clever adaptation to "Once There Was a Snowman" done in many different musical styles. They had a few of the senior couples do the Michael Jackson's Thriller part. Luckily there isn't a photo of that!

The Missionaries loved it as some ran on stage for their part -

and others performed in place, Flash Mob style.

This Elder did a very impressive balancing act as you can see by the next few photos!

This sister did a beautiful dance for the Mission President and his wife and she had made candy lays to give them.

One of the senior missionaries, Elder Melzer did a great magic trick that was a big hit. Sadly we didn't get a photo of the song we did - John played the guitar while a few senior couples joined us in singing "What Child is This."  I loaned my violin to a missionary who played along with us.

The Kingwood Stake left some of the decorations up from the beautiful nativity event which made it very special.

The missionaries love being together and having fun!

We are so impressed by the wards that are assigned to provide lunch for Zone Conferences. The mission pays for the lunch, but I know that it is a lot of work!

This man and his wife bring this chocolate fountain to the Christmas Zone Conference every year as their gift to the missionaries!

This funny missionary got a jar of Giant pickles during the white elephant gift exchange - so of course he had to dip it in chocolate!

The White Elephant gift game was a lot of fun! They divided up into zones to play it.

On Friday, we drove to the small town of Vidor where the other Zone Conference for our mission was held. They needed help getting the packages out there so off we went! 

This talent show was a lot of fun too with singing,

fiddling and piano playing and much more!

There are two of the Hewlett's daughters that sang a duet. Their youngest daughter is a senior in high school and her college age sister came here for Christmas.

We loved watching them display their many talents!

This was very funny - "The Twelve Days of Sisters"

These guys did a very funny parody of "The Safety Zone" videos that all missionaries are required to watch. It was a big hit. 

On Thursday Evening, in between zone conferences, we went Christmas Caroling with the missionaries in our ward. It was challenging to sing in Spanish but we had a lot of fun! One sweet lady that we visited hadn't been to church in a long time. After we sang she hugged me and said softly, "Voy ir a la iglesia." (I am going to go to church) I was happy to see her at the ward party the next evening!

I went solo to the Fiesta that our ward had on Friday night because poor John was hit with another cold and was feeling miserable. Sadly he is the one that is usually taking the photos, but I did manage to get these of the cute Nativity they did.

They had tamales and delicious beans and Costco pies. They tamales were very spicy but so good! We have been invited by President Morales and his wife (he is a counselor in the mission presidency) to come to their home to a help make tamales on Christmas Eve - I'm excited to learn how to make them!

This is a photo taken of the last special zone conference we had when Elder McKay toured the mission - everyone is looking sharp! 

We are missing all of our friends and family during this time of year that is usually all about friends, family and holiday gatherings.  And since  this Christmas season is our first without Ian we are especially missing him now. We found a great talk by Elder Holland, "Shepherds Why this Jubilee" that gave us some perspective about grieving at this time of year. He said,  “You can’t separate Bethlehem from Gethsemane or the hasty flight into Egypt from the slow journey to the summit of Calvary. It’s of one piece. It is a single plan. . . Christmas is joyful not because it is a season or decade or lifetime without pain and privation, but precisely because life does hold those moments for us. It came to me in a profound way that in this life no one can have real love without eventually dealing with real loss, and we certainly can’t rejoice over one’s birth and the joy of living unless we are prepared to understand and accommodate and accept with some grace the inevitability of . . . difficulty and trouble and death. These are God’s gifts to us - - birth and life and death and salvation, the whole divine experience in all its richness and complexity.” This beautiful message reminds us of what we are celebrating - not only the birth of the Savior, but his life, death and resurrection as well. This is why we are willing to leave our home and all of you and come to Texas —to help bring this message of hope and joy to others.

 Merry Christmas!!