Christmas

 

We had our first Christmas here as missionaries in the Illinois Chicago mission.  We did enjoy the Christmas season, even though we missed seeing family and friends in person.  Last week we drove through the largest display of Christmas lights that I have ever seen in the town of LaSalle (one town west of us).  It took us nearly an hour to drive through the display set up in a large park on top of a hill.  The display is all done by volunteers and contributions to drive through go to help local charities.  On the morning of Christmas eve President Shumway and his family presented a devotional over Zoom for all the missionaries.  Later that afternoon we went hiking for a little while in the Matthiessen state park, located just a few miles south of where we live.  This park has narrow canyons cut by streams through the sandstone that underlies this area.  The canyons remind me a bit of the slot canyons in southern Utah, with more water and vegetation and without the red color.  There are similar slot canyons in the larger Starved Rock state park.  On Christmas day we had lunch with a good friend who is a member of the Ottawa ward and her family.  Later in the afternoon we were able to have a Zoom meeting with all our family.  It was great to see all of them.

 

We have continued to visit members of our ward and share a Christmas message and fudge.  We continue to have good experiences as we meet with members and their families in homes.  We are making more and deeper connections with the people in the ward.  We still have a long list of people we need to meet.  Because there are no young missionaries in our area, we also follow up on referrals from church headquarters.  These referrals are generated from the Church’s Facebook ads and other media campaigns.  We have found that many people here are religious.  The parking lots of the various churches are full on Sunday mornings.  Everyone we talk to is fine with us being here on a mission.  No one seems to think that is strange.

 

We continue to drive into Joliet at least once a week for various missionary meetings.  This last week we had District Council meeting.  Afterwards, we took the young missionaries in our District to lunch.  We continue to be very impressed with these wonderful young missionaries.

 

The weather here is still very mild.  It has been the warmest December ever for Illinois.  We have not had any snow yet.  We are fully aware that the odds will catch up to us and winter will arrive.

 

Thanks for all of the Christmas packages and messages.  Have a Happy New Year.

 

Love Elder and Sister Curtis

This plane crash is on a major highway through our area. We stopped to see what it was about.