Ben-Daniel Turns 20!

Dear Mom & Dad,

Here are some pictures from the Christmas Zone Conference and some from Christmas day.

That's Elder Sami. We're good buds. He was my district leader back in my old area.

My apartment

We got toy guns from members on Christmas eve.

Trying on my Christmas gift!

Christmas tie and tie tack

 

Christmas felt weird because I was away from you guys---until the evening when I got to talk to you. But today, my birthday, feels exactly the same, because we never celebrated it on the actual day, haha. [Note from Shari: we always celebrate Ben-Daniel's birthday on the half-year mark in mid-June.]  We are having Washington-like weather today too. Chilly and overcast, haha.

 

To celebrate my birthday, we are going bowling tonight with an investigator of ours, who was baptized yesterday! He's 20 also, so the four of us decided to have a joint celebration of my birthday and his baptism by going bowling tonight. :) We really enjoyed teaching him; he was a golden investigator. Super enthusiastic and excited to learn. We taught him for two weeks and then he was baptized by his older brother who is also a convert. He looks as though he could be Tom Cruise's younger brother, so it isn't any coincidence that all of the young women in the ward showed up for his baptism, lol. 

 

This is the family of Joey, the investigator who got baptized yesterday. He's in the middle. His brother (left) baptized him. The others are his brother's wife and kids.

 

 

I got a lot of birthday wishes from everyone on email, but I don't have enough time to respond to them all; tell them thanks for me! 

 

We have to turn in early on New Years eve, so we'll be partying in our apartment tomorrow night. Going to buy some board games and we're going grocery shopping today :D

 

Heitonga removing the sticky hands he threw on the walls. If you look up and left, you can see the marks they leave, lol.

 

My desk

 

 

Being on the mission has really made me see just how bad for my health my sleep habits were back home. Going to bed at 10:30 and waking at 6:30 has given me a lot more energy throughout the day. Took me a while to adjust to it, though lol.

 

I'm going to try to write a letter to Grandma and Grandpa today and make a late Christmas card for you ;P

 

Chalk art

 

 

Love you mom! I enjoyed seeing and talking to you and everyone on Christmas! Thanks for writing me! :)

 

Elder Ben-Daniel Duffin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ben-Daniel's correct email address!

Shari here---I was just informed I'd written Ben-Daniel's email address incorrectly in the last post.  I've corrected it now, but for anyone needing it to wish him a Happy Birthday, the address is:

ben-daniel.duffin@myldsmail.net

Feliz Natal!

[Ben-Daniel wrote us briefly on Tuesday, the 24th.  Then we had an hour-long Face-Time visit with him on Christmas Day.  I'll share a little of what he said at the end of this blog post.  ---Shari]


Hey mom! Sorry I didn't email you Monday; we had a mission Christmas conference that day so today is my P-day.

At the Mission Christmas Conference

I'm looking forward to skyping you tomorrow! The member whose computer I'll be using will call you tonight to tell you when I'll be calling.

I didn't get an email from you yesterday, so most of the news about me is in reply to dad's email. I heard from Catriel that you all just got back from Utah on Sunday.


I'm doing well in my new area. I'm in a trio companionship now.  We've been having a lot of fun. We have an investigator getting baptized on the 28th.  Elder Tanner and Elder Heitonga are the names of my companions. Heitonga is from the island of Tonga, and it's his first time in America. He's hilarious. He doesn't know what anything is. He tried to eat one of the sticky hands you all sent me, because he thought it was candy! XD




I also got the packages you sent, yesterday; thanks! :) We've been having fun with the face balls and sticky hands.  [Shari here---I heard from Mimi (source of "best things to send missionaries") that they like to have sticky hand fights in their apartments.  I sent a bunch of goof-ball items from Oriental Trading Company.]

Love you mom! Glad you all had a good time at Eric's wedding!  Talk to you tomorrow! And Merry Christmas!   :)


Elder Duffin


SHARI AGAIN: Here's a brief re-cap of our Christmas Day conversation with Ben-Daniel via Face Time.  We tried to get him on Skype (so that we could dial up Jon & Hillary in England on Face Time and let them talk via screens) but Skype refused to cooperate on either the desktop or laptop computers, so we ended up just using Face Time on the I-pad. We were sad not to access Jon & Hillary, but we'll try again next time we get to talk to him.  Grandad and Erma were here and also Uncle Brett.

Ben-Daniel was in good spirits at the Hyatt's home in Richmond, TX.  He told us that he likes the new area he's in, Richmond, and that Texas is flat and green everywhere he's been.  He likes the cooler winter weather (which is similar to a Seattle summer, he says).  He reports that the people are super friendly and he really likes them.

He talked about the Christmas Mission Conference, where about 300 missionaries working in the greater Houston area got together for a holiday meal, games, and gifts.  He ran into someone he knew from Bonney Lake, Elder Levi Mitchell.  He said Elder Mitchell was very surprised to see him!  He didn't know Ben-Daniel had been temporarily assigned to Houston.

No news on the Brazilian Visa.  Ben-Daniel thinks that there may have been some kind of cap put on Visas toward the end of 2013, so he's hopeful things will open up in the new year and he'll ship out early in 2014.  

He showed us some little videos on his camera.  One of them showed him and his roommates setting a grease candle on fire and then trying to avoid setting the apartment on fire.  

He also showed us video footage of the Sticky Hand fight and the elder from Tonga tasting the Sticky Hand.  We heard Ben-Daniel's worried voice from behind the camera warning him, "No!  Don't eat it!"  He said this elder is funny because this is the first time he's ever been outside of Tonga, so lots of things in the US are astonishing to him.  Apparently one morning they were all driving in the car and Elder Heitonga got all excited and demanded they pull over.  Alarmed, Ben-Daniel pulled the car over and asked him what was wrong.  Elder Heitonga pointed to a squirrel and asked, "WHAT is that?"  He'd never seen a squirrel before.  Also, small breed dogs were amazing to him as well.  

He told us about an upcoming baptism of an investigator that he's excited about.  It sounds like he hit the ground running and has been enjoying the work there in Richmond so far.

He had questions for us and wanted to see the pets.  Blackanne was shy and didn't like looking at the I-pad screen, so we didn't think she really knew it was Ben-Daniel.  Hogan, though, recognized his voice and tried to figure out where it was coming from.  The cat was outside and missed the visit entirely.

We ended the visit by regaling him with a rousing, traditional family song, "16 Tons" and he sang the Brazilian Birthday song to us (also great fun) and we ended the visit on an upbeat note.

[Last note: Ben-Daniel's birthday is Monday, December 30th.  We invite everyone to send him an email wishing him a very happy 20th birthday.  He checks his email every Monday.  So send him a quick email now at: ben-daniel.duffin@myldsmail.net   It will be fun for him to get lots of "Happy Birthday" messages that day.)