Merry Christmas! December 17-27, 2014

Our mission is coming to an end.  This is our last week in Boston!  We have had a fantastic end to a fantastic mission.  Here are a lot of pictures to highlight the past ten days...

Thursday, December 18, was our last day serving at the Boston Temple.  These wonderful friends took us to dinner to a favorite Thai restaurant in Arlington after we finished up.  We have grown to love everyone that we have had the opportunity to serve with and have learned so much from them.

From Top left:  Elder and Sister Rex, Elder and Sister Miller, and Brother and Sister Kennedy

Friday, December 19, was our mission Christmas conference.  We started by attending the temple together.  It's very special being in the temple with all these amazing young people in our mission.  We feel so much love for them and are very blessed to have gotten to know so many of them from serving with them in our district and zone.  After the temple we met at the Belmont Chapel and had our conference.

It started with hearing from President and Sister Packard and President Christensen.  They are all such great speakers and every time we hear from them, we come away spiritually fed.  After their remarks we had a musical fireside featuring some of the incredible talent from our mission.  There were all kinds of musical talent including singing, piano, organ, saxophone, flute, violin, and cello.  It was all Christmas music, some familiar and some new to us.  It was all very beautiful.  After the music, the missionaries who are going home mid-transfer (including us) were asked to bear our testimonies.  We were very touched to have this opportunity and shared our tender feelings of gratitude for having served a mission here.

 Dinner was served next, a delicious holiday ham dinner served by one of the Belmont Ward Relief Society's. After dinner, we had skits put on by all of the zones.  There were some really funny ones and some that were more serious, some were live and most were videos.  There is some seriously good talent in our mission.

Here are a couple of pictures of the mission president's family performing for us in between skits. 

This is Michael Packard (14 years old) brake dancing!  His sister, Natalie, (17 years old) beat-boxed for him while he performed.

Here's the Packard family doing a rap that Sister Packard wrote.  They are such a fun family and really seem to enjoy each other and love each other a lot.

 Saturday, we got ready for our very special visitor, not Santa, but Eric!  He left Salt Lake City at 8 a.m. and arrived in Boston's Logan Airport at about 4:30.  We were so happy to see him and to have him here with us for the final week of our mission.  It has been such a treat for us (and him) to be together again.


We picked him up at the airport and dropped his stuff off at our apartment and headed out to a dinner appointment.  A wonderful couple from our ward here in Cambridge, Taylor and Megan Nordquist invited us and our good friends Kyle and Evie Wichersky and their kids over for dinner and a little Christmas Family Home Evening.  Eric fit right in and the kids all loved him, including sweet little baby, Tearza.

Oren Wichersky and Ivie Nordquist--they could almost be twins!

 Sunday was our last time to attend the Cambridge 1st Ward.  Mike and I were asked to sing one more time and we were given a beautiful song called "Lullaby Baby Emmanuel" by our choir director here.  We were accompanied by Kim Berkey.  One of the greatest miracles of our mission is my ability to sing without being scared.  I have talked about this before, but it truly is a blessing and one that I will ever be thankful for!

Nancy and Dale came to our church to support us and then came over for dinner afterwards. We are going to miss them so much! 

Real "Sister" Missionaries

Evie and Sister Moore

I wish I had a picture of everyone that we have grown to love, but there are too many.  They will have a place in our memories and our hearts forever!

Monday, December 22, was our last p-day on our mission.  Since Eric was here, we decided to take him to the historic sights in Boston via the Old Town Trolley. We learned a lot of things we hadn't heard before and we had some funny and interesting drivers.

 We had not previously visited the Boston Tea Party Ships, so we did that this time around.  It was so worth it.  It's an hour tour and they present it as if you are one of the dissenters (angry mob) who came down to the wharf the night of the tea party, December 16, 1773.  The actors were really good and the video presentations were amazing.  The movie at the end had us all just about in tears with patriotism for our country.  We highly recommend this tour!  You even get to throw tea into the harbor!  It's free with the purchase of a Trolley ticket!

Mike looks like he's had a few too many cups of tea or a good bop in the head from Samuel Adams!

 After the tea party experience, we headed to Quincy Market which is a gigantic food court in a very historic building.  I got the special of the day at this mac and cheese place, seafood mac and cheese and it was so yummy!  It had big chunks of lobster, shrimp, and scallops in it!

Eric had Boston Chowda in a bread bowl and Mike had bacon-wrapped scallops.  We all enjoyed our food a lot.  Nancy and Dale got some good stuff as well.  No one left hungry, that's for sure!

Our fearless leaders!

This is the historic "Steaming Kettle."  It hangs in front of a Starbucks now, but it has been there since 1873!

 

We loved this very unique carousel that is down by the waterfront area of Boston.  There are such wonderful things on it like these lobsters, owls, sea turtles, seals, grasshoppers, butterflies, and more!

Next stop, the U.S.S. Constitution.  The oldest ship in the naval fleet.  It's beautiful and the stories told about it's history in the museum were fascinating.  Another great place to visit when in Boston!

 

These were freaky masks on sticks, but the one Eric is holding looks amazingly like him!

This is where the Celtic and the Bruins play!

Edgar Allen Poe

The original "Cheers" location.

 After we made the complete loop on the Trolley, we ended back at Fanueil Hall and Quincy Market for the "Blink" concert.  It was a recording of the Boston Pops Symphony synchronized to the lights on the giant Christmas tree and all the lighted trees in the square.

After watching the lights, we caught the "T" back to Harvard Square and had dinner at the Shake Shack.

Tuesday, President and Sister Packard took Mike, Eric and I out to lunch at Outback to thank us for our service in the mission.  We had a great visit and were able to report a little bit on the things that we had done while serving in the Cambridge 1st Ward.  It was fun for the Packards to meet Eric and vice versa.

That evening, we picked up the sisters, put together some plates of cookies and we went Christmas caroling to some of the members of our ward!  It was so much fun and so appreciated by all those who we sang to.  I wish I had pictures of the joy on the faces of these dear, sweet people.  I don't think they were used to being caroled because they were genuinely thrilled by it.  We ended the evening by singing to our local police officers who work next door to our apartment building.  They loved it!

Our sweet friend, Alice and her husband Jimmy--they moved back to Rwanda on Christmas Eve...

Boston's Finest!

On Wednesday, we had the great opportunity to teach a gospel missionary lesson to an investigator named Eric.  He searched out the church and requested missionaries to teach him--so cool!  We taught him with Sister Hung and Sister Jones and our Eric about Heavenly Father's Plan of Salvation, also called Plan of Happiness.  After the lesson, Sister Hung asked him if he would like to be baptized and he said yes!  We were all so happy for him!

After the lesson, Mike, Eric and I headed back into Boston.  We were intending to go to the Aquarium, but by the time we got in there and ate lunch, it was too late (because they were closing early for Christmas Eve).  Instead, we went to Copley Square and explored a little bit.  It was rainy and cold, so we pretty much just saw these churches and the library and then caught the "T" back to Kendall Square.

The Unitarian Church in Copley Square

We got to hear a free organ recital while he was practicing for Christmas.

Boston Public Library

Riding the "T" back to Kendall Square

We had a wonderful Christmas Eve dinner and evening with the Braithwaite's at their apartment in Waltham.
We had prime rib!  We talked about wonderful Christmas memories from our past and then watched "A Christmas Story."

Merry Christmas!  We had a wonderful, busy, and very Merry Christmas indeed!  It began by making and serving breakfast with Elder and Sister Foote (and their son and daughter-in-law) to our zone!

 It was a lot of fun and very much appreciated by our missionaries!  We have loved serving with Elder and Sister Foote.  They are an incredible couple and they have done so much good for the young missionaries!

One of the very best parts of our day was talking to our kids and grandkids!  We got to talk to most of them and they all sounded so happy!  We got to Skype with Hannah!  The last time for us to have a Christmas call from a missionary child!  She was so happy and so excited to talk to us and of course we were thrilled to see her and talk to her.  She comes home in four weeks!!

We love our little Brazilera!  Can't wait to see her in person very soon!

After our chat with Hannah from the church, we went home, opened our gifts, and prepared for our Christmas dinner.  We decided after much deliberation to have appetizers and desserts.  We had the Braithwaites, the Sisters, and Sophie and Jane over.  Sophia is a recent convert to the church and Jane is a friend.  They were so sweet and fit right in with our crazy group!

A very serious game of UNO!

Sister Jones' second wonderful apple pie!

It was actually a perfect Christmas.  We had wonderful family, friends, and new friends as well as delicious food. It was really great having a Christmas on our mission.  We planned it so that we could go home after Christmas so that we could experience Christmas as missionaries.  It was such a good decision.

We are so grateful for the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  We are grateful for His life, for His Atonement, and for His resurrection.  We are grateful for His example of perfect love.  We hope that we can be a little kinder and help others more every day to show our gratitude to Him for all He has given us!

Today, Friday, December 26, was another very special day for us!  We had our final district meeting and got to say goodbye to our zone.  Afterwards, we went to show Eric Harvard.

Next, we got to go to the temple with the mission president and his wife and with eight young Elder's who are going home tomorrow.  After the temple, we all went to the mission home and had a wonderful dinner with the Packard family.  It was the perfect way to say good-bye to our mission!  We will treasure the past six months for the rest of our lives!  We love the Massachusetts Boston Mission!