It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Sent from Ethan: Mon, Dec 29, 2014 12:00 pm

Hello and Merry late Christmas to all! I hope everyone had as wonderful a Christmas as I did here in Burley. The last couple weeks I had been hoping and praying that we would have some snow for Christmas day and Hallelujah my prayers were answered with about 6 inches of snow on Christmas Eve :)  Burley is in a massive valley between two mountain ranges, so the landscape is very flat and the wind is terrible. Snow drifts were covering the roads and instead of the snow falling to the ground it was flying horizontal! But it is snow none the less so I am ecstatic!

Christmas Eve we spent most of the day stopping in people's houses to share a little thought about Jesus Christ. Perfect, right?  In the evening when we went to a Mexican Fiesta! Wow there was a lot of authentic food, Grandpa Farfan is straight from Mexico.  In the white elephant gift exchange I got stuck with Sardines and crackers.. Whooo! We went to bed and woke up to a White Christmas, yeah!! I got to video chat with my family Christmas morning and see my little nieces and nephew growing up fast. The rest of the day was filled with fun, food and games. Pretty great Christmas and I could definitely feel all the love from friends and family :)

We had a neat experience this Friday with the Smith family. Howard and Jolene Smith are heirs to some really neat historical artifacts of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They are in the care of the Legion Sword of the Prophet Joseph Smith, The Noble Family Bible, locks of hair from Joseph and Hyrum Smith and a Musket owned by Joseph Bates Noble dating back to 1812! The stories of these artifacts are way too long to put on here so see the link! http://keeperoftheprophetssword.net/. Seriously at first I was like "wow.. cool... it's a sword" but the more we talked about it and finally when I saw it in person I was amazed at the spirit around this thing! It's equivalent to a sword carried and owned by Moses! Both were great Prophets of the Lord and it was really cool hearing the history of these artifacts and learning history that I didn't know.  

With the New Year upon us a lot of goal setting and planning is happening in the next few weeks that will be preparation for a great year. Holy Smokes I can't believe it's almost 2015! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

-Elder Howard (ehoward@myldsmail.net)