Christmas Week!

 It is our sincere hope that your Christmas was wonderful! The world needs our Savior more than ever, and I am grateful that we still have this special time of year to remember, and honor Him. Christmas week in the office is an interesting time. We received about a hundred packages after we had already passed them out at Zone conferences. It was fun on Monday and Tuesday as the local missionaries came by to pick up their Christmas goodies. Some came for themselves, and others for their districts and zones. Anyway, we had all of them under the tree, and it was great to watch them all disappear. 

On Christmas Eve, Brenda did the traditional soups (my favorite is clam chowder!). We had 5 elders (the office elders), 2 sisters (the rest of their district), and a senior couple (Elder and Sister Rees) over to celebrate. It was great. Brenda's soups were a hit, and we had tons of finger foods as well. What's a holiday without being able to stuff your face full of food, right?! We all went around the room and talked about family Christmas traditions, and read Luke 2 together. Elder Peery, one of the assistants, from the office had heard me talk about our tradition when I was a kid of having the little individual cereal boxes for breakfast on Christmas, and he found some and gave them to me. It was a sweet gesture from a great young man. The missionaries could only stay so long with us, so they went to make some other visits. They went to go to their piso, and got stuck in the elevator! They called us from the elevator, and told us that they had called the emergency number from there, and that someone was coming to let them out. They ended up being in there together for about a half hour, and so now they have a cool Spanish Christmas story to share. The highlight of our Christmas was being able to talk with our kids and grandkids via WhatsApp, and see the Utah bunch carry on the Musser Christmas eve tradition to celebrate Adam's birthday, and then celebrate Christmas eve together. It did my heart good to hear that Adam even took over for me reading Luke 2. It was just sweet.

The next morning, we slept in, and then went over to the Rees' for breakfast. They had 4 sister missionaries and another senior couple, the Larrosas, come over. The Larrosas are from Maldonado, Uruguay where both Adam and I served while we were on our missions. Unfortunately, they were in the Dominican Republic when Adam was serving, and Sister Larrosa was one of the youth there when I was serving, but we don't remember each other. We had a great time together, and we hurried to get back to our piso to be in time for the mission zoom call. President and Sister Heckmann are wonderful and talked about the Savior and our purpose as missionaries. 

On Christmas morning I was able to get up and meet my goal of being able to do 50 push-ups without stopping. I had been adding one push-up per day to my routine, and it felt good to knock out a goal on time.

The next day we had what they called a "Day of Revelation". We were asked to fast that day, and spend time pondering, praying, and studying to get closer to the Savior. None of the missionaries were supposed to try to go out to proscelite that day. Brenda and I spent a lot of time in the scriptures, and then went for a leisurely walk down one of the Ramblas. At the end there is a raised area where we could go up an escalator, and just sit on a bench. Kind of a neat view from up there (in the pictures this week). 

The next morning, I got up and decided to go for a short run before we went into the office. All morning, I was having a pain in my chest. I finally asked President Heckmann about it, and he told me to go to the hospital right away. I had a couple of the office Elders give me a blessing (which was beautiful). I know that you're not supposed to blow off chest pains, but it didn't hurt all that bad, and I knew that it would likely be me just being a giant wuss. However, we were obedient, and so I ended up spending the rest of that afternoon in the traditional hospital humiliation open-backed dress, having wires attached to me (I hate when the pull those suckers off along with gobs of chest hair), and getting stuck with needles. I was kind of dehydrated (which I'm guessing was part of the problem), but it made it almost impossible for them to draw my blood. The first draw, the guy stuck me 3 times in 3 different parts of my arms, and then finally went into the artery on my wrist to get it. When they needed the second draw, I had two technicians, one on each arm, trying to find blood. They finally stuck a hypodermic needle into the heel my hand (yes, that hurt!). I promised them that I am NOT a vampire!

It all turned out fine, and just as I suspected, I am officially a hypochondriac wuss-boy. However, I know that I can't ever blow off chest pains. The consequences of doing that could be deadly. One tender mercy of the whole episode is that when we went into the hospital, they told me that they are a private hospital, and that we would have to pay for the services. They gave me a list of prices that they could potentially charge, and the first thing was over 600 Euros for walking through the doors. We were trying to do some mental mathematics as we went along, and figured that we wouldn't get out of there for less than about 3000 Euros. However, at the end of the day, they only charged me the walk-in fee, and that was it. I should be able to get that reimbursed to me from the insurance, so that was a blessing.

I'm sorry to drag this on for so long. I hope your Christmas was filled with love, family, peace, hope, and the Joy of the Savior. He lives, and His life is always worth celebrating! We love you all!

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