It's Beginning To Look a Lot Like Christmas! Well...Sort of!

I am shocked that it is already December! The last month of 2014! The year has really flown by! And Christmas lights have started popping up everywhere I look now, but that's about the only sign of Christmas here. Because the weather here is still bright, sunny, and pretty nice. Not cold really at all. It's a little bizarre honestly for it to be Christmas time, but being able to walk around comfortably in a short sleeve shirt.

Anyways! On to my week!

This week was actually really exciting. Not so much because of what happened as far as missionary work. But as far as what happened with us missionaries. So last week I told you that I had Elder English as a companion, well this week we got another missionary temporarily. His name is Elder Daley (and was actually one of the missionaries I split my ward in Murrieta with), and the story behind it is that he is our district leader, and a couple weeks ago his companion had to go home for medical reasons. So he got a temporary companion who was waiting for his companion to get into the mission, and this last week the other missionary's companion arrived. At this point he got put with us for what we thought would be the rest of the transfer, but then President Kendrick told us it would only be for a week or so. One of the best parts though! Elder Daley covers two wards, and so us three have been covering three wards for the past week! It has been one wild ride!

Elder Wixom, Elder Daley, Elder English

Well, now for some actual exciting things we did this week.

Thanksgiving this week was a lot of fun! The morning actually got made into our P-day, and last Monday our P-day got shortened (pretty much just time to email and shop). So what we did was first we had breakfast at a members home in Elder Daley's family ward (the other is a Young Single Adult ward). It was really good! We had the two members, us three Elders, and the two Sisters that Elder Daley splits his ward with. We had a yummy breakfast, set up their Christmas tree, and then played some games for a while until us Elders had to leave (then the Sisters stayed and helped decorate their tree for a bit). Later we had three dinners over the course of the night. One with members in my ward, and then one with members in Elder Daley's family ward, and then lastly with one of Elder Daley's investigators. It was very very VERY filling, and I am personally a little bit glad I don't have to do it again. One Thanksgiving is plenty enough for me.

The other fun part of the week was figuring out church. What we ended up doing was having Elder English go with our ward mission leader on splits for our ward, then Elder Daley and I went to meetings for his family ward, but ended up having to not go to that ward for meetings in the YSA ward, which then we went to. It was a lot crazier to figure out than that description made it sound. But it was a very exciting Sunday.

Other than that not too much happened specifically. We were just really busy covering three wards. We did some service for a member in our ward this week, some service with other missionaries for someone in their ward, and then we also got to meet some really cool members in Elder Daley's family ward that the husband and kids are recent converts. Fun thing from there is we ended up talking about the meanings of names, and what we figured my name means: Jonathon - "Gift from God" (which I already knew that was why you named me that), Dean - either "Valley" "Leader of church or school" or "Law", and then Wixom - "from a town in Hampshire, England originally spelled Wyckham" So I guess I'm a gift of God that is meant to be a leader from Wyckham...or something like that!

Some awesome sunbeams and stuff we saw this week.
Totally made me think of the glory of the celestial kingdom when I saw it!

Now for my spiritual thought. The Church is starting a "Christmas Initiative" with a video entitled "He is the Gift" it's on christmas.mormon.org and it is about Christ being the "first Christmas gift" and how we need to remember what He has done for us. The scripture that goes along with it is John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." So what I would encourage is watch the video, and then share this "gift" with as many people as possible so that we can all remember the true reason for the season.

Happy December! Talk to you again next week!

Love,

Elder Wixom

He Is the Gift