Wrapping Experts

12.21.15

This week we had our missionary Christmas devotional. They first feed us lunch, and then we got to watch the Christmas Carol. It was fun to relax for a little bit and enjoy being with President and sister Ames. Following the video we had a small devotional. It was super spiritual and all of the talks were wonderful. Following the devotional we were given the package of letters that you guys had written. It was my favorite part:) President and sister Ames also gave us a gift. It is this temple recommend holder that has the Fort Worth Mission logo on it and on the other side it has the Dallas temple. We were all pretty excited to get it. I even got to see elder Smith again at the devotional! He goes home in 2 weeks!

  This week we also got to participate in a pretty fun service project. We went to Barns and Noble and wrapped presents for donations. It was for this Legacy River Science center park. It was us and this other older lady. She was super cool and we had a great time with her. We were also able to meet lots of nice people. At first elder Pulver and I were pretty nervous, because neither of us were experts in wrapping. We struggled at first, but now we are present wrapping pros. We are hoping to someday impress our wives with these new found skills:) Also while we were there we had in interesting experience in the bathroom. As I was washing my hands after using the restroom, this guy came up to me and said "Check this out, your going to like this!" He pulled his pant leg up to his knee and showed us one of his tattoos. He totally had a tattoo of two Mormon missionaries! It was pretty sweet. It was kind of random, but it made our day:) It was a great service project and I am glad we got to be part of it.

     We also had another interesting experience while we were getting our oil changed on our car. We entered into the Pep Boys and got in line. While we were in line this guy came up to us and asked us if we knew where this certain store was. We told him we didn't know, but we could go check on the GPS. As we were checking the address, this guy on a bike rode up to us and shouted out, Elders! We found out his name was Riyad. After we introduced ourselves he told us that he had just meet a guy who had just got out of jail and was needing to get back home, but didn't have enough money to hire a cab. Riyad said that he gave the guy a dollar, but he needed a couple more dollars. He told us that if we had some dollars to give him, he would leave his bag and guitar with us and ride to give the money to the guy. We gave him a couple of dollars and he took off to give the guy the money. After he came back we talked to the guy while our car was being worked on. He was a super interesting guy. He even played a couple of songs on his guitar for us. This one song he played was called Johnny. The lyrics were super weird and didn't make any since, but it was entertaining and made us laugh:) We tried to share about the gospel and about the Book of Mormon, but we are not sure if he was actually all the way there. You never know though! It was a really interesting interaction, but we enjoyed our time with him!

   We sadly were not able to teach Pete this week, because he is out of town, but we are going to be teaching him the first week of January. We are planning on setting a new baptismal date with him:) 

   I hope you all have the Merriest Christmas, drinking homemade eggnog and opening lots of fun presents! What a wonderful time of year to be with family, serve those who need it and most of all remember our Savior and what his birth brought in to the world! I know he lives, and I testify that his Atonement is real. I challenge you to all think about what his birth really means to you and then share that testimony with those around you. I love you all!

Elder Griffin