First off I want to wish
everybody Merry Christmas for the last time until 2016, and I hope everyone enjoyed their
Christmas as well! I sure did and pretty
much this entire week. It has been interesting to say the least. Not only were there a ton of meeting
and parties and what not (which means
little proselyting time), but all of our investigators
and less actives left for vacations. So we got practically nothing done in that sense. However, we did manage to
visit a lot of members which was well needed. We
spent a lot of time at member’s homes
this week visiting them and basically trying to get to know them better.
Now some of the REALLY cool things I did this week happened on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day. First, Christmas Eve. Like I said in my last letter, my mission was performing in a choir for the Washington DC Temple Visitor center. The show turned out great! However I ended up not singing. Not because I was being lazy, or had stage fright, nothing like that. That is because I opted out of singing in order to record the whole thing. Yep, I know, that's typical of me. I prefer to be behind the camera anyways. But that's what I needed to be doing because the senior couple in charge of putting the whole thing together hadn't planned to record any of it. At least not until I went and talked to them, which ended up putting me in charge of the whole tech part of the show. (I was not complaining about that, by the way). So I wrangled together what few cameras that were available and I tried my best to record the whole thing. Now I have some footage and these upcoming few weeks will be spent editing the recordings. (Still not complaining). I'm hoping that I can deliver on what everyone is expecting to be a great performance.
Now for Christmas... Oh man, best part was talking to my family, hands down. Of course opening presents was nice because I got some stuff I needed, some fun stuff, and candy... Lots and lots of candy. Christmas Day was spent visiting members for practically the whole day. Them feeding us as well, not as much as Thanksgiving but still a good amount that I was sufficiently full. It's funny to think how Christmas just came and is gone once again. It honestly didn't feel much like Christmas, being a missionary and all really separates you from the world and all the gift shopping and craziness of the holidays, and really helps to focus on the Savior. So in a sense, every day is Christmas for me, just without the presents and talking to my family.
My family did something really cool for me. They went to friends and family and asked to donate a tie so that my family can put together a 12 ties of Christmas. It was great to be able to open one present every morning and see the new tie, who it came from, and their story behind it. Thanks to everybody who helped make my Christmas great even here in Virginia. Now with the New Year, it's time to get back to work in serving the Lord.
Elder Biehn
