It's Not Actually Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As you probably know, today is Christmas Eve, or the day before Christmas in other words. A wonderful time where people get extra excited for Christmas since, it's the next day. Some people hang up stockings, for candy to be put inside of them, which seems like a really gross tradition the more I think about it.

Everyone has family traditions though which is always really cool. For example my family tradition is to have homemade chicken noodle soup for Christmas Eve dinner. That is something I will not be doing this year because I don't have time for that. I will however probably buy a can of Campbell's chicken noodle soup and feel very sad as I eat the three chunks of chicken floating in a disproportionate amount of water. 

Now that I type that out loud, that sounds really sad so I might not actually do that.

I do get to participate in another family's Christmas Eve traditions though and so that is really exciting. 

I actually cannot even believe I am writing an email already. This last week felt like it didn't even happen. Honestly I don't even know what to write this email about since I feel like I just told you everything in the last email 

We did a lot of inviting people to church, since yesterday was the special Christmas service. And we've been talking to people about Christmas a lot and about "Light the World" which is the thing I explained a couple emails ago. And that has been really cool. This morning was a lot of fun actually. We just went around on our bikes spreading some Christmas cheer. I honestly can't think of a better way to spend Christmas Eve. 

Oh yeah, so something fun from this morning that happened, well before that, something fun from this month was that Elder Bower, my companion's Mom sent four advent calendars, the ones that are cardboard and have waxy chocolate inside for each day of the month. And the reason there was four of them was for each elder in our apartment. Because there are four elders in our apartment. So that was really fun this month to do every day. But then this morning was particularly fun because Elder Dougherty, one of the other Elders who lives in the apartment's Mom sent four waxy chocolate advent calendars as well. And so this morning we each got to eat an entire advent calendar full of waxy chocolate. Which was a lot of fun. My body is kind of regretting that though.

So it really does not feel like Christmas Eve. I am currently wearing a short sleeved shirt as we speak, well as we type I guess, well as I type I guess. Unless you happen to be typing something as well while you are reading this, which I imagine would be very difficult to do. If you are however, I am impressed.

But yeah it's just unbelievable. I was just out riding a bike, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and there were cacti. Now, I realize that cacti do not have a whole lot of influence over the weather, but I included them in my description because I felt like it really added to the scene. It's seriously crazy though. We had the A/C, or Air Conditioner as they say, on in the car full blast. It was such a hot day, especially for it being Christmas Eve. Which actually makes me a little frightened because sooner or later Summer will be here and I don't think I'm ready for that.

So here is the thing I learned for the day:

Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve happens to be busier than when it's not Christmas Eve. I found that out and I just wanted to share that with you.

Also, here is my favorite joke from the week:

Q.) What did the janitor say when he jumped out of the closet?

A.) Supplies!!!

Well, before I wrap up, I shall share with you a spiritual message. Because this email is starting to derail. 

Before I had mentioned something about spreading Christmas cheer. And that will probably be what I write about today for the spiritual message.

Much like your favorite kind of jam or jelly or even marmalade if you're about that, cheer is something you can spread. But unlike jam or jelly or even marmalade if you're about that, it isn't a food, and it's certainly not something you spread on bread or biscuits or waffles. Cheer is something you can spread to other people though, and you don't even need a butter knife to do it. In fact you don't need any knife at all. To quote the Beatles, "All you need is love."

Jesus Christ gave us a commandment to "Be of good cheer." Many people think of commandments with a negative connotation. Like they're all restrictions that take the fun out of life. But actually, commandments are just the things that God asks us to do because He loves us and He wants us to be happy. For example, if you were a parent, and you love your child, and your child says, "I really want to play and run around on the busy freeway, it sounds really fun." You would hopefully not respond by saying, "Well you know what, I love you so much that you deserve to have fun, go and do that, live your life, be free, you be you." What you would most likely say is, "I know it looks really appealing and fun, but it will cause problems for you like death, and because I love you, I will ask you to not do that." 

That's what God means when He gives us commandments. And in fact, before I went on this tangent, I had mentioned that one commandment is to Be of Good Cheer. Which I really love because its just such a happy commandment. Because no matter what, we can find ways to be happy. Even when sad things happen, we can always find peace. And when stressful things happen, we can always find something positive. And we can do those things, and anything, through Jesus Christ.

And so everyone, Merry Christmas. I hope that you keep the Savior in your thoughts this Christmas, and every day of the year, and as you do that you will always find a way to be of good cheer.

Til next time!

~Elder Oswald

One Day Late

Well everyone, I know what you're thinking:

"Today is Tuesday. Unless I am mistaken, Elder Oswald sends his weekly letters on Mondays. I know this because I have marked it on my calendar because it is my favorite part of the week."

Well I am deeply touched. And your calendars are correct, I do usually send my letters on Mondays. However, as you can probably tell, I am sending this letter not on a Monday. In fact it is indeed Tuesday. And to answer the question you probably just asked yourself now, the reason why is that it is Transfer week and yeah that's really all I know actually. I didn't actually know yesterday wasn't P-day until yesterday

So speaking of Transfer week, Transfer week, if you don't know, is the week in which some missionaries get transferred from one area in the mission to another area in the mission. And the time between each Transfer is called a Transfer Cycle, or a Transfer for short. In case you're interested, one Transfer Cycle is 6 weeks long usually. Except for this last one which was 5 weeks long.

So I am not going to be transferred, and neither is my companion Elder Bower. Neither are the Spanish speaking Elders with whom I share an apartment. And neither is anyone in my District even. So things are going to be pretty much the same this coming transfer cycle. With the only exception being that I am no longer in as much of a blurry haze of confusion and stress and that I sort of know what's going on a little bit more. So this next transfer will be great, because I already know people and am comfortable here.

In other news, I got to drive this week! That was very fun, since I haven't driven in a long time. And then I remembered that I'm not actually that fond of driving. It's also interesting though because we have this lovely little white box in our car that tracks our driving. And if we go over the speed limit it will yell at us in this horrible voice that pierces to our very souls, filling us with both fear and shame, as it tells us to "check your speed." So that part isn't as fun. But anyway, I'm not the assigned driver so I don't usually drive. Except for there were some times where we were on companionship exchanges and where Elder Bower forgot his wallet where I had to drive.

Also, here is my random fact for the week: I just learned that in at least one of my pairs of pants I can fit an entire Book of Mormon into my pocket.

Also, favorite joke I heard from an old man at church: 

"I have a fear of giants. It's called Fee Fi Phobia."

So now I would like to tell you about this lady that Elder Bower and I are teaching. She goes by the name of Dee, except that isn't actually her real name. Anyway, she is so cool, and she is going to be baptized later this month! 

So, how did we meet Dee? Great question. We met Dee because her neighbors invited her to Church. She came to Church for like 3 Sundays in a row and loved it, before we were even able to set up a time with her to meet with us. We eventually did set up a teaching visit with her though and that first visit was probably one of the coolest moments so far on my mission. I'll never forget it. I have never met someone before who is so ready to learn. Her whole life has been preparing her to learn about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And it has seriously just been amazing to watch her learn and just take in everything that we have to offer her. And here is the coolest part about it. She understands how to really learn. Because as missionaries all we do is invite and help and testify of what we know and what we have learned. The learning process has pretty much nothing to do with us other than us just telling people things. The thing is is, just telling people things really doesn't do much. People have to learn on their own. They have to find out for themselves. They have to study things out and ponder about things and truly have a desire to learn truth and then pray about those things and ask God whether or not they are true. That's how people learn. And that's what Dee understands. In fact every time we'd invite her to pray about something we've taught her she'd be like, yeah I've already been praying about that. She is just loving the Church and it has been just so amazing to see. And the reason why I share this story is because it shows how there are people in this world searching for truth. And it shows what our job as missionaries is. It's to help people learn. I love this story because Elder Bower and I did hardly anything. We didn't even find her ourselves, she was invited by her neighbors, which also shows how important members of the Church are to the work. We are just the instruments in the Lord's hands. And not a clarinet kind of instrument, I mean a stethoscope kind of instrument, like a tool for Him to use to help accomplish His work

But yeah, it has been very exciting to work with Dee.

Well my friends, it seems like it was only just this afternoon that I started writing this email, and yet we've come to it's close already. 

I hope you all have a week that is, as an old friend once said, "good." 

Talk to you next week!

~Elder Oswald 

P.S.- I have some pictures. 

The first picture is of the half eaten watermelon that was in our apartment for what I thought was way too long. 

The second picture is of the half eaten watermelon a few days later even though I thought it couldn't get any worse the first time I took a picture. 

P.S.S.- In case you are wondering we finally threw it out after I took the picture. Well the next morning after.

 Here are a few other pictures just in case rotting fruit isn't exactly what you had in mind: 

Temple trip to the Gilbert Arizona Temple

Temple trip

Zone Conferences

Dinner with the McCormick family

One Year Older and Wiser Too

So this week was good. I did indeed have a birthday. And it is interesting having a birthday in the mission field. You know those movies where there's like the character and they have a super hard life, and it's the same thing day after day after day, and then one day this person has a particularly brutal day, and they're just so busy and stressed and at the end of the day they collapse in their bed from exhaustion only to realize that it was their birthday and they had totally forgotten, because they had no loved ones to remind them?

Yeah it was nothing like that at all. I did on many occasions forget it was my birthday. But I was reminded often by people sending me emails and then by some people in my zone giving me ice cream and a card and then by the presents my mom had sent me in the mail. Which, by the way, were wonderful. I was given the timeless gift of those Little Debbie chocolate peanut wafer nutty bars, which happen to be my favorite sugary processed snack food. They also ship very well. And if you don't believe me, feel absolutely free to try it out. But anyway, other than those things, I had a completely normal day of missionary work.

Once again however, I was disappointed to wake up on my birthday and realize that I did not in fact look and feel suddenly older. 

I am starting to sense a pattern. 

Turning 19 is an interesting event I've noticed however. Because unlike turning 18, you are turning the age which comes after 18, which is 19. When I turned 18, I was a little bit intrigued because I had always imagined actually looking like an adult as an 18 year old. I was still in high school however, and so I realized that maybe being 18 isn't really what I thought it would be.

19 has always been another threshold though. 

Let me explain by telling a story. 

Once upon a time there was a young boy who shall remain nameless. For convenience however I will call him "Kendall". Kendall had always wanted to go on a mission for the Church to which he belonged. You might say that he even hoped they would call him on a mission. Now mind you, at this time, you had to be 19 to go on a mission. And so whenever Kendall imagined himself on a mission, he imagined himself as a 19 year old. And you see, Kendall's image of 19 year old him was, well, different than what the actual 19 year old him turned out to be.

Now, I'm going to tell you something that may shock you. That little boy was me.

And so it is quite interesting to be 19 and on a mission, because it's not much like I expected it to be at all.

Well, now that I've wasted the time of you and I, I shall proceed to the actual more important things.

I had a really good week. We had some really good teaching visits with people. 

I really love being a missionary. I love seeing people grow and learn and come to love the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And it has been very cool for me to grow and learn and come to love the Gospel of Jesus Christ even more. 

So there's something I have thought a lot about. And its the idea of "losing yourself in the work." This concept always intrigued me. Because I didn't particularly want to lose myself. In fact I quite liked myself. I thought I had a pretty good personality, I didn't want to lose that. Besides, I thought, aren't I supposed to use my personality to help others? Because that's a concept I've heard as well, that missionaries shouldn't be cookie cutter robots that are all the same. Because missionaries are all different. We all have different strengths. And the Lord has put us all where we are because there are specific people that we personally can touch. So what does it mean to "lose [myself] in the work"? Well I came to realize that it doesn't mean lose your personality, it means lose the care of yourself. In other words, stop thinking of yourself and start thinking about others. Start caring about them and loving them and serving them, just as Jesus Christ would. 

So I really like that. And I know that if we all try and do a little bit more to just be kind, and not worry about our own problems as much and think about someone else, and just spread happiness and love, that we really can "Light the World" a little bit at a time.

Now, it looks like the time has come for me to say farewell for the week.

Farewell for the week!

~Elder Oswald

A Week's Worth of Confusing and Unorganized Ideas with a Spiritual Thought and the End

Well folks, it's that time again.

You guessed it, it's time to read this week's chapter of "Memoirs of a Missionary: Two Years and Forever" which is the title of the book I have now decided I will one day write.

So this week was pretty good. We had a ton of service opportunities so that was really cool!

Thursday and Friday we helped a super cool guy from the Spanish speaking Ward move some boxes from a trailer into another trailer. It was just like a game of Tetris except heavier.

But yeah I got to practice my Spanish skills which was super cool. 

Also, real quick, I just have a question about cats. Why? I am not making this up, they actually know I'm allergic to them. They can sense it somehow. And I wouldn't say this if it's only happened once. But it's every single time. If there's a cat, it comes up to me, looks me in the eyes, and then proceeds to rub its mangy fur on my pants. It's ridiculous. 

So something that's pretty cool, there's like a professional hair cutting lady, or hair stylist as they are sometimes called, who goes to church here who gives free haircuts to the missionaries. So I got a free haircut last week. 

Oh, also, I've attached a picture of a cactus with Christmas lights that I found. I really like this picture because it is a cactus with Christmas lights.

So last night was the First Presidency Christmas Devotional and it was amazing! Now I know what you're thinking: Oh rats, I really want to watch that, but Elder Oswald said it was last night, I guess it's too late.

Well you're in luck, because you can go on and watch it on lds.org anytime you want!

Anytime I want?

Yes, anytime you want! Which I very much recommend.

Unless of course I'm totally wrong, in which case, my apologies. But I'm pretty sure I'm right.

Anyway, service has been really fun. So Saturday was a special day. And not only was it the day we get ready for Sunday, but it was the World Wide Day of Service that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints put on as a kick off for the Light the World initiative that is going on this December. 

So what is Light the World?, you may ask. Well great question. Light the World is something that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints does every December as a way to make the Christmas Season more focused on Jesus Christ and the gifts he has given us. Now this can often times be hard to do, with much of the worldly culture of commercialization and self-gratification that surround this season in many ways. But what the Church has organized for this month can help us. Every week, we are encouraged to serve in a different way. We aren't told exactly how or who to serve, but we are given ideas and encouragement to seek ways and opportunities that we can show love for one another, and to serve one another and to look beyond the natural selfish and self centered feelings we have, and look outwards as Christ did. Give as Christ gave. Love as Christ loved, and as He loves even now. And I can promise that this is how we can really experience joy this Christmas. So I would encourage you all, if you haven't already, go on to Mormon.org and you can learn more about Light the World, and then start serving!

Well disapointingly enough, I think that's all for this week my friends, have a wonderful week!

~Elder Oswald

P.S. - Random fact of the week:

I realized that if you add a 'B' and an 'E' to the beginning of Arizona, it becomes Bearizona, which I like to imagine is what the state of Arizona would have been called had it originally been populated by bears rather than by humans.

Also, an excerpt from Kendall's message to me with some pictures that Elder Bower's mom shared with me to go with the story:

So real quick, totally forgot this story from the week:

Elder Bower and I were on bikes one afternoon. And we had dinner with the Bishop and his wife. But his wife called and said the Bishop was out of town so she'd just drop off the food at our apartment. So we got back from biking at the same time as the Bishops wife. And so we got our bags of food at the entrance of the complex and then went to our apartment. 

Then we realized that the key pad to our garage was broken. We had a garage door opener in our car though so that's why we never needed to use the keypad. The car was in the garage though. Because we were on our bikes. 

Luckily there is a side door to our apartment though. Unfortunately the key is on the key ring with the car keys. And we didn't take our car keys because we were on bikes. 

So we were locked out of our apartment. So we just sat down on the curb outside of our apartment and ate our soup and grapes. She also gave us some awesome chocolate covered caramel corn. But yeah so then we had a meeting at a ward mission leaders house which we had originally planned on driving to. We couldn't drive to it though because our car was locked in the garage. So we biked there. Except it was far away and we had to bike along a super busy road. It was kind of sketchy. But yeah we made it to our meeting. Then we had the mission leader drive us to our lesson since we wouldn't have made it there on time. Then we biked back to the apartment, hoping to find the Spanish Elders inside since they of course had a key to the apartment.

Instead we found them standing outside waiting for us. Apparently they don't have a key. They thought they did but I guess it doesn't work. So we ended up calling some mission office staff and eventually someone came with a key and got us inside.

It was crazy.

Another Week, Another Destiny

Howdy y'all! Just thought I'd try out a new greeting today. Turns out I'm not actually fan of it.

So another week has passed in the mission, and so I therefore imagine another week has passed for you all as well.

So things are going really well here in Paradise Valley. We haven't found a ton of new people to teach, we've just been working with those we are teaching. We have a few people on date for baptism who we're working with. The trick is just getting appointments with people and having people forget/get sick/get lice/get called into work. It's been going pretty well though.

We also got to do some service for an older gentlemen on Saturday. We pretty much did whatever random jobs he needed us to do. One of them was finding his missing potato so that was an adventure. We never actually found it by the way, so that was really disappointing. 

Seriously though the stories you get to share from being on a mission are wild. Like last night we were driving through some side streets and we stop at a stop sign, as one does, and we see, I kid you not, a small train with a smiley face on the front of the engine doing donuts in the street. There was a man driving it and it looked like it was his kids in the passenger cars. It was so weird. It didn't even seem real, it was like something out of a dream.

But yeah the mission really exposes you to a lot of new experiences, like daily exercise and cactuses. Or cacti if you want to be politically correct.

But yeah so it's a lot of fun with the Spanish speaking Elders in our apartment. During study time, when they're doing their language study, we just hear from the other room a lot of yelling in Spanish. Every day. The newest development is that one of the Elders just got sent the Spanish version of the soundtrack of the Disney movie Coco today. Because fun fact, that movie is actually approved for us to watch. So that's all we've been listening to today. It's definitely not going to get old. Not gonna lie, there's some great music on there.

So Thanksgiving happened! That was a lot of fun. We unfortunately are not allowed to knock on people's doors unannounced on that day for some reason though. I guess people have "families" or something and we need to have "common courtesy" or whatever that means. For some similar reason no one wanted to have lessons with us either. I kid. But it did make for a less productive day. We just had some extra study time that day. We also went to the Flag football game that a bunch of people from the Wards did and we had the pleasure of participating in that. So that was a lot of fun for me to run around a field aimlessly for two and a half hours. I did catch the ball every time it was thrown to me though. It was also thrown to me once. 

Then we were invited over to a members house for Thanksgiving dinner which was really nice of them. Then after that we went to another members house who invited us over for more pie. So that was also nice.

Now it's time for the Quote of the Week, the part of my weekly email that I have always done, and that I definitely did not just make up right now. So here's a really cool quote from C.S. Lewis: "No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboards. The only fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give it up."

This is what I love so much about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That God has made it possible for us, through His Son Jesus Christ, to be redeemed from our mistakes, so we can eventually live forever as families in His presence. 

I personally love my family a lot. And the knowledge that I can spend eternity with them fills me with so much joy. And I want others to be able to feel that as well.

And that's why I'm here in Arizona. To spread the joy of this message.

Thank you all so much for the emails, love, prayers, support, and varying degrees of affection that you may or may not have.

Have another great week my friends, til next time!

~Elder Oswald