Merry Christmas!

Good news! Our boxes came and we have boots and coats.

What a neat Christmas we're having. No hustle, bustle or hassle—Just the sweet spirit of a new baby that graced our world so many years ago. We sort of chuckle at the dizziness and busy-ness of those who have no time, remembering how distracted we were in the “land of the gentiles.” If you can help yourself to slow down and just feel the loving kindness beaming down from heaven, we promise it’s worth it. It's there…just waiting.

Here's a picture of our tree.

Richard found it. We put it on our laptop today and we took a few minutes to sit around it talking about our many gifts, including you. Our little Christmas is oversimplified, for sure. Our only stresses are trying to get our “Joy to the World” DVD shipment in so we can finish delivering to all our prospective investigators. We’re on our last DVD, trying to figure out whether to give it to a prospective investigator or to use it ourselves as we teach this week (we have 6 appointments). Since we gave one to the library we thought we could check it out but it isn’t available. This is a good stress.

About the library:  It's open long hours and won a prize of being the 4th best in the nation.  Very popular here.  I love the librarian. Her name is Cory and she has a hooked arm. She likes to write and gave the community a challenge: They are to write a story of at least 250 words, Dr. Seuss style (Like Green Eggs and Ham), and they can only use the 50 words on her list, and they have to use every word. I wrote a story about the Plan of Salvation using words like Aleutian and vole. I’m hoping I’m the only entry so I can win.

The skies are dark, the snow is blowing and the fields are white. This morning we were going to make a quick run to the post office before our District meeting began (via polycom-telephone since the rest of our district is in Anchorage) but when we turned on the porch light and saw how hard the new snow was blowing our courage failed. It might sound better to say our intelligence prevailed. Anyway, we didn't get to the post office until after our district meeting. Meet our district elders:

Elder Harris, Elder Yang, Elder Loomis, and Elder Cameron

They asked how they could help and we’re teaching a little family with a 10-year-old daughter, so we asked them for teaching gimmicks. They told us to boil an egg and get a bottle. Draw a face on the unpeeled boiled egg and tell the child she’s the egg. Then crack the egg and peel off the shell (repentance) to reveal the goodness within. Then baptize (dip the egg in water – Richard’s part), pour a little alcohol into the bottle, cap it and shake it, then light the bottle and tell the child that it’s the kingdom. Stick the egg on top of the bottle and it will be drawn in. Our egg got half sucked in. We tried it again and again until our church building smells like a meth lab, but the poor eggs just shattered halfway into the sucking in process. We just can’t put this child through such a demo. We report on this to our district next Tuesday. The mishes had such high hopes for us.

Here’s Rich with our broken egg in the bottle, the bottle of alcohol and lighter. It’s your turn.




Next day: We met with the Mobley family last evening. The little 10-year-old was impressed with Richard’s salt-and-pepper demonstration. Brother and sister Mobley are great people. We felt warm inside as we bent into the storm to find our snow-covered truck. Yes, it’s worth it. We look forward to that sweet, quiet thrill throughout our beautiful white Christmas week.
Merry Christmas! We love you!

Richard and Linda Later

p.s. May-day:  Need teaching demo ideas for next Tuesday. laternlater@gmail.com