How was everyone's Christmas? Hopefully everything was beautiful and amazing. We had a white Christmas and then it rained and melted almost all of the snow we had. What a blessing! The roads were pretty bad in some places. The people that run the snowplows in Utah need to teach these Virginians a thing or two. Anyway, Christmas was great and it was fun to talk to the family.
I am now living in Arlington. Yes, the same place where the National Cemetery is. We are hoping to go on a P-day and see the changing of the guard. Or at least I am. My companion has already gone, but we live 7 minutes away so who wouldn't want to go again right? I am serving in the Bella Vista ward. There are a lot of english members that have callings here. The bishop is American. Surprisingly, though, my ability to understand spanish has really improved in the last week. Interesting...
We went to a breakfast with the stake president for all of the missionaries in the stake. It was the biggest house I've ever seen. Their secondary kitchen was nicer than most people's regular kitchen. You can imagine how their full sized kitchen was. No words to describe it. His wife was really nice and put together fruit baskets for each companionship and a stocking for each missionary. The sisters each got a pair of gloves and all of the missionaries got some really nice pens that had a designer name on them. I was almost afraid to open it and use it. We're pretty spoiled here.
We had a baptism last night. Her name is Charo. It was so fun to see her come up out of the font after the baptism. I've never experienced that before and I loved it! After the baptism was over we realized that the Elder didn't pull the plug on the drain. The door was already locked to the front of the font so we couldn't just reach our arms in to do it. Guess who got to go wading in the water... Haha, I only went down the first two steps because I didnt' want to get my skirt wet, but I couldn't reach that far with my arm. You can imagine how silly it must have looked when I was standing on one foot and trying to grab the chain with the other. Don't worry, I had pants on under the skirt because it was cold outside. I almost fell in a couple of times, but then we found a clipboard that helped me reach it with my hands and we pulled it. Mission accomplished!
I can't believe it's almost 2010 already! We aren't allowed to go out on the 31st so we get to watch a movie with our zone. We are watching "Up." I'm so excited. It's going to be weird, though. We also get to watch a movie on Halloween. Hopefully everyone has a wonderful New Year. Make some good goals that will last longer than the first few weeks. And make them good spiritual ones too. None of this "I'm going to lose 10 pounds" junk.
I love you all and thank you for your love and support. Happy New Year!