December 24, 2012

Missionary Slim Wishes you a Merry Christmas (Week 46 in Pennsylvania, Week 10 in Washington, PA)

Happy end of the world, everyone. Well... Almost. I honestly completely forgot about it until Wednesday, spent all of Thursday trying to calm people down and let them know that the world was NOT in fact going to end ("No really, Jesus said nobody would know when he is coming!"), and woke up rather cheerfully Friday morning. Yep. Nothing. Well, nothing here in Pennsylvania. I have yet to hear if the world ended anywhere else yet.

Good news, though! If you really think about it, the 'world', being all of the wickedness and sin and such, really isn't such a bad thing to end anyway. I don't know about the rest of you. - I'm personally looking forward to living in a world without the 'world'. Just sayin'.

For those of you worried if the poor, starving, missionaries in Washington, PA are... poor... and starving, don't. We are certainly not all that starving, especially after the generosity of all of the members out here:



Yeah. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to gain 200 lbs. this Christmas season, seeing as Elder Colvin doesn't eat any goodies. Seriously. ("Well, if you aren't going to eat all these goodies, who is?"  "Elder Anderson, I think you know the answer to that question.")

We met an interesting gentleman this week. His name is Mohi. He referred himself, so I gave him a call.

"Hello...?"

"Hi. This is Elder Anderson. I'm a missionary from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day...."

"Ah, yes you beautiful person. It is so much an honor to speak to you this wonderful day. I have heard much about you and your church, the Mormon, and Joseph Smith, oh I'm so sorry about what happened to him, it's a true tragedy, the heavens weep over him. And Brig-man Young, he is a hero! A true hero! A yes, thank you for calling, you beautiful person. I was just calling to request that you and your bishop would honor my request to grace me with your presence. I am available in the early afternoon. Feel free to stop by any day. Thank you so much, you beautiful person." *click*

Okay...

So we stopped by at the address listed, went inside the apartment building, up the elevator and over to his door. I wound up my fist to give his door a knocking, but heard voices from within:

"So, if you wouldn't mind following along, I'll read this part here: 'The bible is instruction given from Jehovah to His prophets. 2 Timothy says All scripture....'" Yep. He was meeting with Jehovah Witnesses, and by the sound of thing was in the middle of their first discussion. As tempting as it was, we chose not to interrupt their meeting and stopped by another day.

We get there, and he sits us down and starts to tell us about his plans for doing a 'Galaxy Gallery' of 1000 hand-drawn pictures. And he wants a picture for the Mormons. ...Okay... I'm not really sure where all of this is going to go. But he certainly is one of the most interesting individuals I've ever met.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm super stoked for Christmas. For real. I've been able to do some of my favorite things of Christmas here and there too, which has been super happy-making, like caroling for Salvation Army, and helping a member wrap Christmas presents for his son. And of course, Christmas day will be spent with an awesome member family, and I get to talk to my family. 

I'll close with an awesome thought that my brother sent me today. A lot of people are looking forward to spending Christmas at home with their families, having big dinners, lots of presents, etc. At the same time, though, there are many who have no choice but to go without during Christmas. Trust me, I've met many of them and been in many of their homes. It's humbling and makes me grateful to see how little they have and how much joy that little bit brings us. As my brother told me, Christ was homeless on the first Christmas. There is something in that which is both profound and vitally important to us.

Another thought: My parents have a VHS tape which has a bunch of old Christmas cartoons on it (really old, like circa 1990). I looked forward to December each and every year so I could watch that tape over and over and over - it was my favorite! One of the cartoons is Garfield's Christmas special. He, Jon, and Odie go to Grandma's house for Christmas dinner and presents and such. One of the last lines of the show though really strikes me. After all is said and done, Garfield exclaims "Christmas isn't about the giving, and it isn't about the getting. It's about the loving." Isn't that so true? Isn't that the biggest message of Christmas, Christ's life, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and all the Prophets? Love God and love everyone else. On this hangs all the scriptures. How true it is.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Love,
Elder Alex Anderson, AKA Missionary Slim

PS. If you want fantastic, non-stop Christmas music, mormonchannel.org has got it!

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