Post Christmas

December 29, 2014

 Hello Everyone,

First of all, I hope you all had a great Christmas with your families. I hope that you all got everything you wanted hahaha. Christmas here is strange. They celebrate on the 24th, and they celebrate it more like New Year's Eve than like the birth of the Savior. Everybody gets together, stays up till midnight (or later) and sets off fireworks. No one reads Luke 2, or even mentions Jesus Christ, and it was a little sad.

Our Christmas Eve celebration with a part member family.

I love the Christmas traditions, and all the symbolism that comes with it. On Tuesday, we had our Multi-Zone conference with our area of the mission, and Sister Klein, the mission president's wife, gave an amazing talk about Santa Clause. She read a book entitled "I believe in Santa Clause." It is short enough that I could write it word for word here, but I won't for copyright reasons. Basically it talks about the main things we notice about Santa, his read suit, white hair, he loves little children, and he brings gifts. It then makes the connection to Jesus Christ. His blood he shed for us was red, he is perfect, he loves the little children, and he is the greatest gift, and he gives us the greatest gift we can ever receive.

Sometimes the presents, lights, Santa, and even the food get villianized by people because they see them as distractions. I see them as the opposite. I see these things as arrows that all point back to Jesus Christ and the wonderful atonement that he has given us. For this reason, I really do love Christmas and all that comes with it.

In other news, we did move houses this week. Our new house is right across the street from Channel 23, a major TV station here in Honduras. Every night they throw a Christmas/New Years party outside our house, and we sit out on the balcony and watch it from 9 to 10 every night, and our investigators all call us excitedly saying, "We can see you! We can see you!" It is pretty funny.

It doesn't smell, and we even get warm water every once in a while for a few seconds!

I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to be a missionary, and I am especially grateful that I can be in Honduras, as strange as it is. I love the Gospel that I have been called to teach, and have a testimony of it. Have a great week, and I can't wait to hear from you all next week!

Elder Aldrich

Our trip to La Ceiba