Monday, December 27, 2010

Feliz Natal!!!


Merry Christmas Everyone!!

I hope this Christmas was as great for all of you as it was for me. I got alittle homesick thinking about some of the family traditions I had to do without this year, but overall it was fantastic. We got to do a lot of things to help people understand the true meaning of Christmas, the Birth of Jesus Christ. We s閚t most of our Christmas Eve and Day with a recent convert Adriana and her family. They had never officially celebrated Christmas before so we gave them a Christmas. Unfortunately, as usual something came up that isn磘 allowing me to send pictures from my camera. This week it磗 batteries. But, the two attached pictures are from the Christmas Conference we had last week.

The Christmas Conference was amazing. The whole mission was there, all 130 of us. It was fantastic. We had some good training from our president and a nice musical program. Each of the zones in the mission was responsible to provide a musical number. My zone combined with another as a choir to sing Angels we have heard on high. We had a massive lunch of churrasco, which means BBQ. It was delicious. We watched a picture compilation from all the missionaries in the mission that sent in pictures. And the big surprise, the President let us watch The Grinch with Jim Carrey. That was quite fun in Portuguese even though some of the Dr. Seuss translations were a little lost. For example ``Cindy Lou Quem`` (quem means who in Portuguese). The conference was awesome and got us all even more excited to carry on in the Lords work. 

Christmas Eve we had a wonderful night with Adriana磗 family. Me and Elder J. Santos 创made创 a Christmas tree from fallen Pine branches we took from a planted pine grove near our house. We used wire to bind it together and look more or less like a Christmas Tree. We bought some decorations to make up for the ugly parts. Also our lunch that day was with Hamilton and Ednete, our amazing investigator family. They have a few challenges to overcome before baptism but they are already strong in the Church and sign up on the monthly missionary meal calendar. At Adriana磗 we exchanged gifts and had a wonderful dinner of lazagna, rice, chicken, and pork roast. Fantastic. 

President made Christmas day more or less a P-day because here proselyting can be a little on the dangerous side because of all the drunk people on the streets. So we spent most of the day at Adriana磗 house again and had a nice lunch with them. That family had a wonderful first Christmas. Adriana is usually a pretty stressed out person but I could see that she really enjoyed herself and I磛e never seen her smile more. Christmas night we went and made some visits to some of the less actives in our ward. It was a real nice and peaceful day. It was so nice to call home and see how everyone was doing. Christmas can be a bit sad your first time away from home, but it was wonderful doing the Lord磗 work and bringing the real meaning of Christmas to people. I hope it was equally great for all of you, focusing on the Birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. I shared Isaiah 9:6 with many people. From this verse is take words for Handel磗 messiah ``For unto us a Son is given...创 Thanks to everyone for helping make this Christmas a wonderful time for me.

I love you all. And Happy New Year!
Elder McLelland

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