...If Only In My Dreams.... (Dec 21)

Merry Christmas!!!

This week wasn't very productive, but I'd consider that mostly due to the car accident we had on monday.

Oh, and in response to your email, that is AWESOME that grandpa is doing indexing for people from Yankton County!!! The counties out here are tiny and Yankton County is just a few miles larger than the city, so that's just amazing! Anyway. Way cool.

Ok, so I'm a terrible son and just wanted to make that all a cliff hanger about the accident. We just backed over a rockery curb thing on Monday going out of a members' driveway. Since we drive a little Toyota Corolla, it popped out the bumper and apparently broke the window washer resevoir. We knew about the bumper pretty quickly, and it was fixed easily enough at an autobody place, but the resevoir we didn't know about till we tried to put new washer fluid in and it just poured out the other side. Sooo, yeah. We spent a good part of a day or two this week getting that all worked out, and we're still waiting for the call from the office to let us know the new resevoir is in in the dealership in Sioux City to take it there. Kind of a pain in the butt.

Christmas seems to be pretty well set for us. I got the packages thursday this last week and Elder McConnel got his too, so our little charlie brownish fake tree has presents around it now. [FPEO thank you for the stuff to Elder McConnel, he was pretty stoked about it and thought it was funny you'd send him something, but I wasn't about to tell him the truth behind it] We are also set for Christmas and Christmas Eve, we have dinner with our Branch Mission Leader Christmas Eve and Christmas morning we're going to a member of the branch presidency's house for calling home and then to a young couple in the branch's house for dinner. If that doesn't make much sense, just know I'm covered. It's been a 180 since thanksgiving and it's awesome. People are trying to figure out ways to feed us now. And I nearly cried and hugged the Sister who invited us over to call home from her house on Christmas, since it had been up in the air how we would pull it off. But she said we could use her basement for privacy and take as long as we wanted. I nearly hugged her. Her and her husband are awesome. And their youngest son, who's just a little younger than me, just came home from college and looks a lot like me. Kind of creepy. Everybody in the branch kept thinking he was me, and so did Elder McConnel.

Yesterday we got the chance to deliver gifts to people from "Santa," and it was a cool experience. They went to people in the branch having hard times and we were asked to help deliver them. It helped to meet with some people and also was just cool to see. It's helped me see the real side of christmas, since all we've got to do much of lately is tick people off by interrupting their christmas season by knocking on their doors and bringing them out into the cold, or so it seems. Some people may be more receptive, but most are just too wrapped up in the season to be annoyed by people most of them don't consider christians (people don't make the connection that we introduce ourselves as being from the Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-Day Saints, or that it says JESUS CHRIST on our nametags in big letters, or that we say we'd like to share a message about JESUS CHRIST with them. But, as we've been told, we're going to burn in eternal Hellfire and Damnation [FPEO would it have been bad to say "See you there?" I almost did on accident....] because we worship a different Jesus. But mostly that You're Going to hell stuff just makes me laugh). So Elder McConnel and I plan on doing just a little door-knocking christmas eve morning with santa hats on.

We had an awesome lesson this week on prayer with our investigator who used to have a baptismal date. We hope he's either received his answer now that we've taught him how to pray more in-depthly with scriptural references and committed to do it. We also have an appointment with the investigator who was in the hospital. We're hoping to set a date with her since she's received her answer. We also are probably going to be having a family out of the huge pile of elect people in Vermillion moving here soon, and they are set for baptism. Just remembering to look on the bright side of life!

The weather is pretty nice right now, just upper twenties or so, perfect for my new best score in disc golf this morning (14. Not bad here) but snow is coming and storms apparently, too. Woo! So i'll have a white christmas for sure! We went out on the Missouri this last week. It's frozen over in parts and was really flippin thick. Don't worry about me in the cold, I'll be good. As long as we avoid curbs.

Well, Merry Christmas Everybody! This is my last monday P-Day, so I won't be sending another one for a week and a half. I still can't believe how fast this transfer went.... Thank you everybody who has sent me christmas gifts!!!

Love,
Elder Gates