Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve, we all went to my parents' house along with my sister's family and the sister missionaries. We started with our traditional Mexican FEAST (so much food!), and then had a family talent show.  My favorite talents were our beatboxing/dancing kids (see pics) and my niece's hilarious practical joke.  She had each younger cousin come into the room alone, and had them repeat a series of phrases designed to get Santa to come faster.  At one point they were instructed to stand up, and right at that moment, her dad would slip a sopping wet folded towel onto the chair.  Each time, the child would shriek and jump up.  It was so funny!

After the talent show, my dad handed out adult and child quizzes to test our knowledge of the Christmas story.  We all learned some new things, like why it was necessary for Mary and Joseph to travel for their taxes and the census.  This wasn't Roman law, but Jewish law - they had to travel back to their ancestral home.  

We ended with opening the gifts from my parents.  It was lots of fun!  

My cute sister with her creeper husband (just kidding, J!)

Lily and her idols.  She can't wait to serve a mission just like them!

French braiding torture

My Daddy-o

Beck is all about the presents

Don't we have a photogenic family?  Stunning, just stunning!

Cora

Zoe being creeped on by her uncle J ;o)

Waiting for the talent show to start

Huddling up before the beatbox/break dancing show

Beatboxing buddies

Jackson doing his thing

Jackson playing "Jolly Old St. Nicholas"

Sofie playing "Families Can Be Together Forever"

Maizie playing "Silent Night."  The tongue helps.

My niece, K, doing her rump-soaking talent ;o)

The next victim

Wet hineys!

Lily fingerspelling at lightning speed

My beautiful mommy

My mom and I playing "Oh Come, All Ye Faithful"

J singing a Christmas song he wrote whilst sitting atop Zoe whilst she texts.  Wait - he didn't write the song whilst sitting atop Zoe.  You know what I mean.

Playing the handbells along with Grandma - "Little Jesus"

Zoe's talents are texting and sneering  ;o)

Happy Sofie

Time for presents!

Article 5 pick-up and Russian adoption news

Today we got an email from the consulate in Guangzhou saying that our Article 5 is ready for pick-up. This took about a week longer than it should have, and basically eliminates the possibility of our traveling before our agency's Hague accreditation expires.  I'm sad about that, but trying to have faith that getting transferred to a new agency will go smoothly and not slow us down or cost us more money.  Barring any major unforeseen issues, our daughter WILL be coming home.  My heart is heavy for all the families being affected by the Russian adoption program closure.  We have several close friends who are in the middle of Russian adoptions of kids with Down syndrome, and most of these families have already made at least one trip and have met their children.  I can't imagine the heartache they are experiencing now.  It's so tragic that President Putin would choose to put his ego above the lives of innocent children.  There is already too little room and too few resources for the existing orphan population, and now that there will be no children leaving, things will only get worse.  (Also included in the bill he's to sign is a stipulation that would eliminate assistive funding from American NGOs, so there will be less money for many more children.)  These orphanages are not good places now.  I can't even bear to think of what they'll be like in a year's time.

We are fasting and praying for a miracle.  I hope you'll join us.

A whole lotta catch-up (ketchup?)

I've neglected my poor little blog.  Here are a few highlights from the month of December.

Earlier in the month, Zoe and Ethan got to go to Winter Formal.  Yes, Ethan is only 14, and every year we debate about what to do with these dances.  We finally decided that a) since we live in a small community and there are no church dances, and b) that the kids go in big groups of friends and not alone, we're OK with it.  And in small-town fashion, there are hordes of parents there to supervise (gawk?) and it's really not at all the same as the formal dances I went to as a teen.  Anyway, maybe we're rationalizing, but that's our position - for the moment.

Also very exciting has been the progress on our kitchen this month.  We now have the cabinets, fridge, freezer and microwave drawer installed on the west wall of our kitchen, and the hutch is mostly in in the dining room.  I feel like we may finally finish!  The hutch was rebuilt using our original blueprints, although originally there were two hutches.  Ours is also taller than the original, but otherwise very similar.  I'm excited to get it stained and get the glass and hardware installed.  

One of the 1910 hutches

The new single hutch

That's what nearly 10 foot tall cabinets look like! 

Our microwave drawer can heat up 4 plates of food at once!  A dream for me!  

Then came all the Christmas programs and concerts - 5 of them to be precise.  Unfortunately, the pictures from the older kids' events aren't that great because all I had was my iPhone.  I also spent most of the time recording and didn't take many pictures.  I wish I would have!  At least we have the videos.  

Jack saying his part

Pretty easy to spot the Whicker kids  ;o)

Cora, singing her heart out!

Cora the Christmas tree

My little kindergartener, Beck

Beck saying his part

Lily on the piano.  Can I tell you how much I love watching my deaf daughter play the piano?

And now on percussion 

Loundia getting set up for her choir pieces

Ethan is barely visible behind the tall blonde kid on the front row on the right side.  

It's blurry but I love this picture!  

Jonah on drums.  He's amazing!

In the next post I'll include pictures from Christmas Eve and Christmas day.  :o)  

Joshua's Skype call and email - 12/25 & 26

Joshua during our Skype call

We had an exciting Skype call with Joshua on Christmas day.  It was wonderful to be able to SEE him and to hear him sounding so great.  He laughed a lot and his companion joked around with him quite a bit.  I loved seeing that they get along so well.  Joshua said he was worried about putting on weight since everyone feeds them so much, but he and Elder G exercise and run every day, so I think he'll be alright.  ;o)  He told us this completely dorky joke:  "Why do the Lamanites have trouble walking?  Because of all the knee-fights."  Boo.  ;o)  Anyway, I honestly can't remember much of what we talked about, but I remember feeling reassured that he is doing great and is happy.  I love that boy!

Here's his email from yesterday, and dang it!  I missed him when he was emailing so I didn't get to respond to him like I normally do.  I was busy taking the tree down and completely forgot that his P-day got switched.  Argh!
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Merry (late) Christmas!  I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas!

This past week and a half was pretty enjoyable.  Last Monday we had dinner at a member family's house.  We made the mistake of telling them that we don't eat many veggies in the apartment, so they made it their goal to make sure the Sun Prairie ward ALWAYS gives the missionaries veggies!  It can be a good or a bad thing depending on how you look at it. Haha.

Tuesday, we had a district meeting.  Elder G taught it for the first time, and it went really well!  We have a Christlike attribute training each week during our district meetings, and this one was a really good one about being charitable and showing unconditional love for others.  We felt the Spirit strongly as we talked about how we can have more charity for others, and we all learned a lot from it.  Later that night, we had dinner at Sarah's!  Some missionaries talk about how they develop a lot of love for some of their investigators, and that's how it was for us with Sarah.  She made it really easy!  She always has questions about the gospel or about missionary work or temples, and she's really funny, so we enjoy talking to her.  After dinner, the zone leaders came and exchanged with us, so I stayed in Sun Prairie with Elder H.  He's a pretty cool kid, I think he's been out for about a year and a half.  He had a lot of the same concerns that I had when I first got to the MTC, and when I first came into the field, so he helped me understand how to overcome those challenges.  It was really funny though, because Elder G. and I are some of the only missionaries that exercise really hard in the mornings.  Others usually stretch and do a couple pushups and situps, but that's about it.  I told Elder H, "Make sure you bring some supportive underwear, a helmet, and an athletic cup so that we can do my Spartacus Crossfit workout in the morning." And he had a really concerned look on his face and said, "Uh... What is that?"  Elder G and I busted up laughing.  We both made it our goals to make every missionary who we go on exchanges with JACKED! Haha!

Wednesday, Elder H and I got a lot of work done.  We visited M and B and planned to teach them revelation through the Book of Mormon and prayer, but we ended up teaching them the entire Plan of Salvation, unplanned, as a companionship who has never taught together before.  It actually went really well and Elder H said my teaching and my knowledge of the scriptures is really good for only being out for 2.5 months, haha.  I've got a long way to go, but it definitely made me feel good!

Thursday, it snowed 1.5-2 feet of snow, and so Elder G couldn't leave the apartment.  We tried to get the car out, but we noticed that the guy in the parking lot across from ours couldn't even get his 4-wheel drive truck out of the snow, so there was no way we could get the Chevy Malibu out. Most of our zone wasn't able to leave their apartments for the day because of how bad the weather was.  Everyone figured that it probably really was the end of the world! Haha.  Anyway, Elder G and I studied our scriptures, read Jesus the Christ, and ate.   A LOT.  It was a pretty long day, to say the least, haha.

Saturday, we spent a lot of the day shoveling snow for ourselves and some less active families, so that was pretty enjoyable.  Sunday we went to church with K and had our Christmas program.  Elder G and I sang in the choir and taught the lesson in our Gospel Principles class.  We have to teach in this ward a lot!  We got asked to give talks on January 13th, too. It made me think about when I gave my farewell talk, and I said (jokingly), "Well, I'm glad this is the last time I'll have to give a talk for the next two years."  Yeah, I don't think I'll be able to get away with that here!

Sunday and Monday night collectively, we had like 5 lunch and dinner appointments, and all but 1 of them was Mexican food.  You can probably guess how Elder G and I have been feeling the past couple days.  Luckily, some of the members gave us lots of Gas-X.  The ward here really cares about their missionaries :)  Haha!  I tried to put off opening presents until at least Christmas Eve night (because we wouldn't have time on Christmas, we had District meeting and proselyting to do), but I only made it to Christmas Eve morning.  Elder G tried tempting me to open them all, but I kept telling him I was going to wait until later at night.  He finally got me to open JUST ONE, and then I couldn't stop.  He took a shower, and by the time he was finished, all my presents were opened.  It's funny how the adversary works in those ways to get us to just justify little things, and slowly, those things become bigger and bigger things.  Don't tell Elder G that I just compared him to the adversary... haha!

Anyway, Christmas was really fun, and we had a great District meeting.  We learned a lot and we got a lot of work done before we went to dinner at a member family's house and then skyped our families!  It all came and went pretty quick, but I'm excited to see what next year has in store for me!

I'll leave you with a thought, about a Christlike attribute that I've been thinking and studying a lot about lately - Hope.  A lot of times, I think people use hope as kind of a lazy word, like, "I hope I get a good grade on this math test," when they don't really do anything about it (i.e. they didn't study - which I'm definitely guilty of!).  Christ had a perfect brightness of hope, and that example is the very opposite of today's definition of hope.  Hope comes from our faith in Christ, which requires us serving Him.  That means we have to work to strengthen that faith, and then, we can hope, or EXPECT, that God will bless us or carry out his end of the deal.  He'll carry us if we show him we're dedicated to serving Him, and we can strive to obtain that perfect brightness of hope and KNOW that good things are to come.  I don't know why I find that so interesting, but I do.  Think and ponder on that! Read Moroni 7:40-48.  Look to see how important that it is that we have hope, and strive to obtain that perfect brightness of hope that it talks about in 2 Nephi 31: 20.

"Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men.  Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life."

In that verse we are actually *commanded* to press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men.  So we need to be diligent, have hope, and charity towards all men.  As we do those things and continually apply the atonement into our lives as we read our scriptures, attend church, and pray to develop our relationship with God, and help us to actually *know* God and come closer to Him, we are promised eternal life, which is the greatest gift our Father in Heaven has for us.

Good stuff!

Anyway, I love you all, and THANK YOU for all the Christmas gifts and packages!  Thank you for all your love and support!

Elder Whicker

Joshua's email - 12/17

WOOOOO! This past week has been BUSY!  We taught S almost every day and got her ready for her baptism on Saturday!  She got sick a few days before, so we were a little worried, but everything worked out and her baptism went really well!  There was a good turnout and she really enjoyed the baptism, and the talks given were really powerful!

After my email last week, we went to the store and bought food and light bulbs, since we only had 2 working light bulbs out of like 9 in our apartment.  While we were at the store, I had my first encounter with someone who wanted to Bible bash.  It was a man with a slightly questionable mentality and appearance who came up to me while Elder G was busy looking at something in the aisle of the store, haha.  He tried to argue with me and I told him what we know to be true and then told him to have a nice day as we walked away.

Tuesday, we had a Zone Training meeting, and we learned a lot about how to make and keep appointments.  Elder G have been applying those principles and we have already seen blessings from them.  Sometimes people seem very interested in our message so we set up return appointments, and when we show up, they aren't there.  That's been happening a lot lately, so the training meeting was really helpful.  It felt really weird being there with lots of new people in our zone.  Elder Aubrey was one of Elder G's and my favorite elders, and he's not here anymore, so it feels a little empty, haha.  After the training meeting, I went on exchanges with Elder W in Beaver Dam.  It's a tiny little town with a branch of hardly any people.  The town is about twice the size of Miles City, but the church is probably a third of the size.

After the exchange on Wednesday night, Elder G and I talked for a little bit about our exchanges.  Elder G told me that he went to dinner at a ward member's house, and his wife talked all about her mission in Guatemala.  She talked about how the First Presidency had possibly discovered the Waters of Mormon, and how each of them came to visit to know for sure that it truly was the Waters of Mormon that they had discovered.  She said that each of them unanimously agreed that the body of water, was in fact the place where Alma baptized the people in Mosiah 18.  CRAZY!!!!!!  I felt chills all over my body as Elder G. told me that.  He said that the member even has pictures of the place, and that the mission president at the time even allowed the missionaries to go there to study.

Later, we got S's baptism all set up for Saturday after we taught her the remainder of the commandments.  S is WAY solid, and I was so excited for her!  Our Ward Mission Leader got the opportunity to baptize her, and I got the opportunity to confirm her a member of the church.  I was really nervous before church yesterday, because I had no idea what I was going to say!  I said the confirmation part of the blessing probably a thousand times in my head, but I wasn't sure what would come out of my mouth as I blessed her.  When the time came, we went in front of the church and we put our hands on her head and I felt like I wasn't even the one talking! The words were just coming out of my mouth, and it was crazy how powerful it was.

That's about it from this week. On Saturday, I got my Christmas package from my family that I've been waiting for!  We went to the post office to pick it up, and one of the ward members, Sister C was there.  I was expecting to get a relatively small box, but my eyes opened wide when the post office worker handed me an ENORMOUS box!  I said the first thing that came into my head, which happened to be, "Wow! I'm glad that my mom finally sent me the Xbox and flatscreen TV I've been asking for! Now we'll have something to do all day, Elder G!" (obviously kidding) and Sister C BUSTED UP laughing!  She could NOT stop laughing, especially because she knows how busy we've been with S and K lately.  HAHAHA, it was probably one of the funniest things that happened this week.

Anyway I'll leave you all with a quote from one of my favorite talks by Jeffrey R. Holland!

"Don't you give up. Don't you quit.  You keep walking.  You keep trying.  There is hope and happiness ahead... It will be all right in the end.  Trust God and believe in good things to come."

Elder Whicker

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