December 27, 2017
Hey ya guys,
It was so great to be able to skype you two days ago. Forty-five minutes goes by too fast on Christmas Day. Well, the rest of Christmas was great. We were at the Christiansen's for dinner. They fed us ham, turkey, sweet potatoes, parsnips, carrots, and corn. It was very good! We also opened some Christmas crackers and had some Christmas pudding.
Then for Boxing Day, (I guess they call Boxing Day St. Stephen's Day here in Ireland) we went to the Walsh's. They're in Sligo Branch and live about ten minutes drive from town. The Christiansen's are about halfway between Mullingar and Sligo which is in Mullingar's boundaries but they have permission to come to Sligo branch We played a lot of board and card games with the Walsh's and it was a lot of fun. I'm not entirely sure where all of the members live but most of them live about ten to fifteen minutes outside of town. I think the Christiansen's are the farthest away. They don't really live too close to a town because they're more just out in the country. The branch is really great though. They are very friendly and were so surprised when I told them that I could play piano because didn't have someone who could play.
There are a few Christmas traditions/things they do here in Ireland/Scotland that they don't do back home. They mainly say "Have a happy Christmas" instead of a merry Christmas. A traditional dessert around Christmas time is mince pies which have fruity mince meat in them. (They taste a lot better than what I just made them sound). They also have a lot of Christmas crackers. I think you can get them back home in the States but they are big here this time of year.
So I told you a little bit about John (I guess John is a very popular name in Scotland/Ireland) but Elder Derry and I found him GQing. We asked him if he had twenty minutes to meet with us and he said yes so we walked to a bench and taught him the Restoration. He seemed really interested since he was asking a lot of questions but we haven't been able to meet up with him again due to him, along with a lot of other people being busy celebrating Christmas but we're still in contact with him.
The area here in Sligo is one of the biggest in Ireland. We don't really go to visit the other areas to proselyte but we drive to Mullingar every Tuesday for District Meeting which is two hours there and two hours back. There are quite a few castles in our area as well as a lot of hills.
One of the questions we've been asking people this week is what is your favorite part about Christmas? We usually get two responses: the drink, or spending time with family. With the latter one being what most people say.
Thank you guys so much for the Christmas packages and all of those letters! They were wonderful!
Hope you guys have a great week,
Love,
Elder Calley
