Hermana McKay Hadley: All You Need is a Dancing Snoopy

CHRISTMAS was amazing!!! It was such a great week! First I need to send out a huge Thank You to all my family and friends for all the letters and gifts! I felt so loved and so spoiled this Christmas! Christmas is so different in the mission but it is for sure something special! I am so grateful that I was able to spend my Christmas celebrating Christ's birth and talking with my amazing family!

We had a great Christmas Devotional as a mission. It started out with a ton of traffic because there were so many accidents and a lot of rain so driving was a little hard. It took some people 2 hours to get to the church house! We had hot chocolate and cookies as we waited and then we sang Christmas songs for a while. We had a very funny performance done by the AP's, my Zone Leaders, and Elder Hatfield and Myers. Elder Hatfield and Myers rewrote the words to "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" and then also “The 12 days of Christmas”. It had everyone laughing and they were really proud of themselves. We ended the night with a spiritual message from President Henrie and some musical numbers. I played my favorite version of “Silent Night” for the program and the Spirit was so strong that night!

Christmas Eve was spent with another road trip with the Elders. I had made a ton of Christmas cookies for us to go and take to people in our branch with little Christmas tags! The members loved it! We then went to the Henao’s for a Christmas Eve party. Latinos celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve and they open up all their gifts at midnight, I don't know why but we went and had an awesome time at their party.

When we first got there Hermano Henao wasn't there and when a male is not in the house the Elder’s cannot go in. It was cold outside so the Elders had to get a little creative, I will send a picture.

We spent the rest of the night there and read the Christmas story of Christ's birth from the Bible in Spanish with their family. It was an awesome night! It was different not being able to do my families normal tradition of eating Chinese takeout and watching “A Christmas Story”, but I was able to focus on the real reason of Christmas.

Christmas morning was great! We opened all of our gifts and listened to Christmas music! Me being me started freaking out like a 5 year old when I opened my last gift from my parents. It was a dancing snoopy doll. I was so happy and so excited I pushed the button over and over again as I watched it dance back and forth. Then at the bottom of the box was a cute book my mom had made of pictures of my family and I got so emotional it was a crazy little roller coaster but it was so amazing!

I made french toast for our Christmas breakfast as I wore my new missionary apron and we had our mission nurse over for Breakfast. We went to church where we did a musical number as missionaries and we sang “Away in a Manger” in Spanish. Church of course started 25 minutes late because they all run on Latino time but it was a very great sacrament meeting.

We went over to the Allen's to Skype our families! It was such a special moment to see and talk with my family! Then the Allen's gave me a gift and it was ANOTHER dancing snoopy but it was a Mexican one that danced to Feliz Navidad!!! Now I have TWO dancing snoopy’s!!!!

Defiantly one of the best days ever! It’s been a great Christmas and we have already seen so many miracles this week with 3 new investigators!!! I am so happy I am here as a missionary of our Heavenly Father. Have an amazing New Year everyone. Set goals and make plans! It works:) Love ya!

-Hermana Hadley

PS Hermana Johnson had Elder Hatfield cut her hair... it was adventure