Elder McKay

Merry Christmas!

This week was rather fun.  On Thursday we had a mission conference and had a talent show, dinner, and devotional with everyone in the mission.  It was good to see a lot of faces, but especially Brother Trowell who brought the Brunswick missionaries down.  (He was the one that we read the Book of Mormon with every single morning for a month until he had an unshakeable testimony.)  Elder Fuller and I both sang in the choir that Sister Barry put together for the devotional and we did this incredible piece called "Who is He in Yonder Stall?"  I'd never heard it before, but my companion had sung it when we was in the BYU Men's Chorus.  For some reason, everyone thought my falsetto was pretty good, so they set me in as first tenor; oh gosh, that song has some high notes!  I think we were deep into Soprano territory with that one.  Maybe yo can find a BYU version on YouTube to see what it was all about.  One of the Stake Presidents also put together a slideshow of FJM 2011 that was pretty funny - I thing I'll send the DVD home so you can see it this weekend.  Unfortunately, I forgot to submit pictures before the deadline, so there is only one or two photos on the entire disc that have me in them, but you can still get a good feel for what "the South" is like.

For some reason, people must think missionaries starve around the holidays though, because I have never been so full all the time in my life.  Urgh.  Lol, it doesn't help that I'm still skinny and everyone we visit thinks they need to fatten me up.

So we were playing sports today during our P-day downtime and the Spanish elders showed up with a group of people from their branch.  Our games quickly changed from football and frisbee to soccer and it got wild!  One of the funniest moments of the day was seeing Katie (one of the latino members who is probably less that 5 feet tall) literally run underneath the legs of Elder Evans who is at least 6'6" as she was trying to steal the ball from him!  He was definitely surprised and everyone else was laughing hysterically.

Another miracle, I got to see Jessica (my other recent convert) yesterday afternoon even though she moved from our area.  That was a definite Christmas gift to me getting to see both John and Jessica on the same weekend and catching up with both of them.  Happily, they are still both solid and having a lot of joy out of the gospel.

Well, I'll call Sunday and we can chat then.  Hopefully, there will be a member wherever I'm going who will be willing to let us use a computer to Skype.

Love ya!
Elder M.