Post Christmas Email - All in All, an Awesome Week!

Hey everybody!

Well, another kind of short email this week, since I just saw you guys like, 5 days ago. :)

All the Boys Together for Christmas via Skype

Not a ton has happened since then, really. It was super hard going back to work on the 26th, let me tell you... Waking up at 6:30 was ROUGH. And all of us were just super trunky, having just talked to our families and everything. The general consensus was just that everything was there waiting for us at home and we all really wished we could be there. It was pretty hard to hang up and afterwards Elder Alexander and I just kind of looked at each other and were like "I miss my family..." It really helps me understand why they don't let us do that all the time. It's difficult to transition back. It was really like I was just sitting at home in the living room with you guys, just like normal. Things still seemed pretty much the same. Emotionally, just a really weird experience. Cause it made me sad and miss you guys so much, but at the same time it made me so thankful for you and realize more what I'm doing here and why I came. Anyway, in summary, it was really cool to talk you guys. :) Glad to see that everybody's doing well. :)

Also, Dad, I'm really sorry I ate your birthday present...I'll make it up to you, don't worry. :)

So, right after I said goodbye, I got some good dinner from the Kusselings, and then they drove us home to finish the night.

Like I said, waking up Thursday was pretty hard, but we had a really good member visit in the afternoon that helped. Between that and some stuff that came up with our apartment (mostly light bulbs) we didn't really have much of a chance to do anything else.

Friday was great! Much easier waking up, and we had a good weekly planning session with some good stuff planned for this next week. In the evening we went and visited the Noumbolibona's, who had invited a friend, Alain, over. We taught the Restoration and have another rendezvous set up for this week too! He seems really solid.

Saturday we got to go see Olivier and hear him play guitar a little bit. It was a really good rendezvous, and we kind of got him recommitted to do the lessons and see what sort of blessings they can bring in his life. That night we made a whole bunch of calls and set up a bunch of rendezvous for this week, which is super great. We also went to the really tall building again (thus the pictures of the Eiffel Tower again) and did some porting there.

Yesterday was kind of a regular missionary Sunday. Crazy day at church, with a pretty intense lesson with our amis, kind of arguing the logic of the Fall and stuff... Sacrament meeting was good though, and we got to talk to a bunch of members. We had a meeting set up for after church, but he didn't show up, so we headed home and organized our area book for a little before heading out to Alberto's place. Unfortunately, the train schedules and everything made it so we didn't have time, but on the way back we were able to come across a guy named Felix. He speaks really good English, and contacted us actually. He's young, likes religion, is super classy, and he seemed way cool, and I kind of feel like he was the reason that we were out there last night.

All in all, with Christmas and everything, an awesome week!

Thanks for everything that you guys do for me. I really appreciate it and feel your love in your emails.

Happy New Year!

Elder Bigler