Merry Christmas

January 03, 2023

Merry Christmas

Senior missionary party, including President and Sister Chase

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone. We hope that you have all had a special holiday season, especially celebrating the birth of our Savior. We have had a special time here in Chicagoland. Again this year, we delivered homemade fudge to all of the members that we have a relationship with, as well as missionaries that we work with and our friends that we work with at the food bank in Ottawa. We made 90 half-pound boxes of fudge and as of tonight we have given away 89 of them, including one box that we opened and started eating today. We have a good time dropping in on those we know and wishing them a Merry Christmas. We loved showing the “Christ Child” movie again to some of our friends. This movie brings a special spirit to the season. We also invited a number of members to our ward party, which was very successful.

We have been invited to a number of members homes to celebrate the holidays. We have gotten to know many members very well and we will miss them. We will need to find ways to keep in touch.

We have also done a lot of things with other missionaries during December. We attend the temple with Elder and Sister Ahlstrom and then stayed overnight at their apartment just north of Chicago. The next day we went down to the Museum of Science and Industry. The museum had a display of over 100 Christmas trees from around the world. The museum has been holding this exhibit for 60 years now and it was packed with families coming to celebrate Christmas. We also had a Christmas party in Naperville with the other senior missionaries in the mission. We raised the idea so we ended up being in charge. We have grown close to the other senior missionaries as well as the young missionaries in our district.

We had an interesting experience attending zone conference. Because of an incoming blizzard, our zone conference which had been scheduled for December 23^rd, was combined with another conference on December 22^nd. We left our apartment at 5:00 am to drive to the mission office in Downers Grove. We picked up two sisters and then drove up to Crystal Lake, a suburb northwest of Chicago. We had a wonderful zone conference, which focused on the Savior and His mission. After lunch, we took the sisters back to Downers Grove. At that time the snow had started to fall. It took us 4 ½ hours to get back to our apartment with the snow, wind and traffic. But, we made it back safe. The next day we were pinned down in our apartment with howling winds blowing snow into drifts. The temperature dropped to -8 degrees F. When the winds finally settled down, we ended up digging out drifts in front of garages on three different homes that prevented people from getting their cars out. We were actually quite lucky because we did not get the brunt of the storm. We only received a couple of inches of snow, but with 30 – 40 mph winds and subzero temperatures the snow came off of the fields and piled up on the leeward side of any building. Since then, the weather has warmed up and most of the drifts have melted away. We know that was only a small taste of what winter

weather can be like here. At least we weren’t in Buffalo New York, which is still digging out.

We hope all of you have a great 2023. We look forward to seeing you all again sometime in September.

Love,

Elder and Sister Curtis