A Sprinkling From On High

Santa Claus is coming.... *bzzzz* ... home for the holidays!... And since there's no place to go, let... Good King Wenceslas...wish you a merry Christmas and a... silent night. 

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeeer, had... pine cones and holly berries...underneath the mistletoe last night... singing polly-wolly-doodle-alla-day!

Merry Christmas everyone! The Christmas miracle of the week was that it SNOWED! Honestly, it was one of the best days of my entire mission. At night right before we turned in we built a snow-missionary. Random snowball fights would break out in the middle of our knocking sessions. Downtown Centralia actually looked pleasant in the snow. In all honesty, I didn't even know that I liked snow until that day. Sometimes something has to be taken from you before you realize how much you actually love it.

The day after the snow storm, of course, was not nearly as much fun, because it rained and we ended up tromping through freezing slush through hours on end, but it was a small price to pay for a moment in parad-ice. Despite all the spontaneous fun and frigid slippage of the week, we actually had a very successful week. We found a lot of new investigators, and had a few great people come to church. One investigator who came to church was named Rose. She had been invited by a member to come, and had not been introduced to us at all yet. Well, we met her, and set up a time later that day to meet with her in a member's home. I didn't get to go to the appointment, but she is on date to be baptized on the 30th, so (as it says in the old Dixie melody) "Shout hallelujah! Praise His holy name!" We are very excited, and grateful that we were able to meet Rose.

In other news.... umm... Centralia had a 'lighted tractor parade', which in and of itself shows quite accurately what kind of town Centralia is. (Not in a bad way, just in a very accurate way). I wouldn't be surprised if my dad had 'lighted tractor parades' in his hometown when he was growing up.

Other than that, I don't have much to say, just a lot of pictures which are very, very overdue. So with that in mind, adieu.

--

Elder Benge