We had a great ward Christmas party. Almost half of the people there were friends of ward members. They loved our party. We started with a spiritual portion in the chapel and then went to the cultural hall for dinner.
Santa was vaguely familiar. I think he was Jack Sparrow (see posting on our July picnic) in his December costume.
The second Monday was a FHE at the Finnigans for several seniors - missionaries, ward members and some of their neighbors. We had a great pot luck and had a lot of fun playing a game with our white elephant gifts. We ended the evening with some carolling.
December had been a month of lots of partying. We are doing a lot of work as well.
This past week, we had Zone Conference again. We went to Oshawa, Barrie and Oakville. Also on Monday, we had one missionary (Sister Choi from Calgary)leave for another mission in New York, one elder arrive from the MTC and two missionaries arrive from the Philippines. Tuesday we had three missionaries go home. We have been receiving Christmas packages for the missionaries since late October. We got a lot of them delivered the first of the month at MLC - Mission Leadership Council. The rest we got out on the three days of Zone Conference. I think we have had over 700 packages come for our wonderful missionaries. A sad thing for this time of the year is that there are about 25 missionaries from poor homes who do not get any packages from home. There were two Moms of two of our elders who got together, via e-mail, and ordered things to be sent to the mission office so we could put packages together for these elders and sisters. A couple of other parents sent us some money to buy things for those who needed something. Sister Anderson and Sister Donnelly put all their packages together. The office sisters (3 of us) baked 96 muffins or cupcakes each as Sister Shields was putting together small bags for all 204 missionaries.
Zone Conference was the close of a chapter for one of our APs, Elder McBride. He goes home on January 3rd. The APs always do some teaching at Zone Conference. Elder McBride was the "Ghost of Transfers Past". It was hilarious but also a great teaching tool. He and his companion taught the missionaries to "remember", remember successes from transfers past to help them to improve their current transfer. Yes he is wearing a turban.
They also taught us to listen to the spirit. Each day, they had a missionary bear their testimony in their native language (Mandarin, Haitian Creole, and Japanese). It was amazing. The first day, when Elder Lokatama (from Indonesia) bore his testimony in Mandarin, I didn't have a clue what he was saying. I was in tears for the whole thing. I did indeed feel of his spirit. I learned later that he did not end in the name of Jesus Christ. He ended with "I know, I KNOW!" It was so powerful.
It is such a privilege to work with these wonderful young missionaries. They are the future leaders of the Church. We have an amazing group of future leaders here in the Canada Toronto Mission. They are great examples to us. We love them. We love the gospel. We love serving the Lord!
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