Nola's Journal: Christmas Day

Christmas Day turned out to be very busy for the missionaries. They finished the blanket/hygiene kit service project on Christmas morning. It was so nice to see the North Americans working with the Latinos. They they all went to the computers and called home. It was our job to help them, but when we went to test out the computers the night before it was a little discouraging to see how many were not functioning. As it turned out Dennis and the Packard's have CCM issued phones so they gave their phone to missionaries who could not get connected with the computers. I ended up giving my personal phone to a sister who was in tears because she could not hear her parents or they could not hear her using the computers. She used 30 of my minutes for December. It was a fairly emotional time to watch these missionaries call home. Both elders and hermanas cried. The saddest one was an elder who called all the numbers he knew and no one answered. I don't know, but I suspect that he had not communicated the time of the call to his parents. Sister Packard gave him her phone later in the day and he was able to call home, but he was certainly distraught at in the morning when everyone else was calling and he couldn't reach his family.

The sister in the front with the white dress ended up using my phone because she couldn't get a good connection on her computer.

The cafeteria staff went out of their way to put on two special dinners. One was at lunch and the other was at the evening meal, cena. These elders are eating either ham or turkey, with a flan/chocolate cake type dessert. They also served a cream of almond soup at dinner which is a specialty soup but I am no sure our missionaries appreciated it. They had a choice of a Mexican pop or a can of root beer.

I was so pleased with our missionaries who voluntarily went up to the front of the room and sang songs to the staff as a thank you for spending their Christmas day cooking for the missionaries instead of being home with their families. Earlier it had been decided that the senior couples would cook for the missionaries. Wow that would have been a disaster. I really appreciated them coming also. Below is a picture of the missionaries singing. Above is a picture of the staff recording them.

We watched several devotionals and videos on Christmas day. First was the church produced video called, The Testaments. It is the story of Christ's birth and life. We also watched a live devotional from the MTC in Provo with Elder Bednar and his wife speaking. They loved watching the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas program from 4 years ago with David Archuleta. In the evening we watched a production called The Light of the Nations. (La Luz de las Naciones) It is a production put on by the Latino community in at the Conference Center in Salt Lake. It talks about all the different countries that have a tradition of a Great White God. There was a lot of singing and dancing in the program. At that DVD, the last of the night, the cafeteria staff had prepared popcorn in Christmas bags and had soda for the missionaries as they watched it.