Christmas Eve in the Mission Home 2011

Our Mission Office Elders (Elders Curtis and Johnson) along with the Assistants (Elders Hillyard and Dabrowski) came over early to help prepare for our Christmas Eve dinner. There was plenty to do ...

In the Mission Home the stereo system we have uses cassette tapes and FM/AM radio. The only real "modern" option was to play a CD... and that was broken. So for Christmas, we bought ourselves a new and rather inexpensive CD player with small speakers. Elders Hillyard and Johnson are "transferring" the old speakers to the basement in case someone in the future has a need for them.

Elder Dabrowski is updating President's iPad with all the new arriving Missionaries who are either at the MTC or soon will be. It's amazing what information he now has available and stored in that gadget.

Everyone pitched in to help get dinner ready. The mothers' of these Elders would be proud if they could see how their sons efficiently maneuver around the kitchen.

Then there's Elder Curtis. He worked in catering at the Joseph Smith Building in Salt Lake City. He knows how to set up a dinner table. He is demonstrating how to fold napkins and how to have everything presentable for a banquet.

And when its done, this is how is should look. Elder Curtis is amazing. Every missionary has such great talents, and this is just one of them.

Soon the rest of the missonaries arrived: Elders Dopp, Sorn, Krzyminski, Murphey, Myler and Walter. We truly had a wonderful dinner. The place settings were fabulous and the meal the missionaries prepared was one of the finest we have enjoyed while in Poland.

The real treat of the night was the Christmas hymns that the missionaries sang. If you want to hear angels sing, listen to the missionaries at Christmas time. Elder Myler is so gifted musically and the "Men's Choir" was breathtaking. (Left to Right) Elders Johnson, Dopp, Murphey, Curtis, Krzyminski, Dabrowski, Hillyard, Walter, Sorn and Myler playing the piano. This was one of our best Christmas Eve's.

We sang and visited for some time. Finally, it was time to head home and get ready for Christmas and Sunday.

After the missionaries left, we received a few calls from home. The above is one of my favorite tree ornaments. This year it has another duty...hiding the star that no longer lights up because it fried!

Our stairway leading to the second floor with the stockings from our family. It's late and time to retire... but the doorbell rang. This late at night, we wondered who could be at our door now?

Guess who showed up? At first we thought is was Ed Torrance (people in Las Vegas would know him); but no, it was 'Mikolaj'...the Polish Santa Clause! This is a great man in this costume. We won't tell who it is; but we love this man as does everyone else in Poland!