Dear Mom & Dad,
Here are some pictures from the Christmas Zone Conference and some from Christmas day.
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| That's Elder Sami. We're good buds. He was my district leader back in my old area. |
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| My apartment |
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| We got toy guns from members on Christmas eve. |
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| Trying on my Christmas gift! |
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| 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.
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| 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
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Heitonga removing the sticky hands he threw on the walls. If you look up and left, you can see the marks they leave, lol.
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| 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
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| Chalk art |
Love you mom! I enjoyed seeing and talking to you and everyone on Christmas! Thanks for writing me! :)
Elder Ben-Daniel Duffin
