Christmas at the MTC

Christmas here was fantastic!!!! One of the best yet!!

On Christmas Eve we had a devotional with the MTC presidency and their wives.  It was fun!  Sister Clegg talked about Mary and her great experiences and hardships she had.  Then Sister Brienholt had us sing a fun song. She wrote the MTC 12 Days of Christmas. And it goes like this:
On the 12th day of Christmas the MTC gave me 
12  hours of class
11 loads of laundry
10 more commandments
9 outbound calls
8 hours of rest
7 lukewarm showers
6:30 wake up
5 HOURS OF GYM!!!!!
4 chocolate milks
3 new companions
2 haircuts free
and a rock solid testimony!!!!

I was really fun! She chose a sections of missionaries to sing each part so we were constantly getting up and sitting back down again. Each verse got louder and louder and louder!  Everyone was very into it. Especially day #5...everyone here LOVES gym! There were always whistles and yahoos after that line.

We got to hear from L Tom Perry on Christmas morning. He brought most of his family and they read the story of Christ's birth from different perspectives from the scriptures. It was fun. He said "I will let you borrow my family so you can have one here with you on this Christmas day". It was very sweet! Oh and by the way our Elders got up at 6 and got in line to save us seats so we sat in the 2nd row right smack dab in the middle....they're so good to us!

Then we went back to our rooms and got our white elephant gifts we made for our Elders and headed to the classroom to open all our presents with our Elders.  Unfortunately the Elders were late because they found that a bunch of stuff had been stolen out of their room while they were at the devotional.  It was so sad. There was a total of $1200 worth of stuff stolen. Ipods, cameras, cash, speakers, and other things.  Hopefully they'll get it back. They've interviewed everyone that lives in their building.  But once the Elders finally arrived we all changed into our Christmas pajamas...Thank you MOM...... and we opened presents together around our little pink tinsel light up tree....thank you EMILY!!!!! It was fun!

Then we had a Christmas dinner/lunch which was surprisingly good and we got the rest of the day to write letters and study.  Then that night we heard another devotional form greg Olsen who is a famous artist from the church.  It was interesting to hear him talk about how hard it has been for him to depict the life of the Savior.  It was a very nice devotional and I really love his paintings!

It was so amazing and uplifting to have a whole entire week of talking about the Savior's birth. Instead of frantically running around buying Christmas presents and trying to bake everything I possibly can!  I've always known that I should be focusing on the true meaninng of Christmas but I finally comprehended and undersrtood it this year and I hope I will never look bacl from this year on! I love our Savior Jesus Christ with all of my heart! I will forever be grateful for His infinite atonement. I know that through His atonement I can do anything and  I can overcome anything.

I love you all and I am so grateful for all of the Christmas love, packages, artwork, gifts, cards, and pictures that I have received! Once again, I am the most loved missionary in the entire MTC....by far!!!

con amor

Hermana Taylor