This week has been a blast. Elder Laceste is a great missionary and a lot of fun to be around. And we've been loving our new Dodge minivan! I can't believe that I'm driving a minivan before all of the girls back home, haha.
As most of you know, missionaries have a rule that when you back out of a parking space, the missionary not driving has to stand outside and guide the driver. In Walkerton I remember every morning having to stand in the practically vacant parking lot while my companion backed out. I think the only thing that Elder Bennett could have realistically hit with the car in that parking lot was me. I felt like it was the most useless rule ever. And it was. But I followed it anyway because obedience is key. Here in Windsor however, as I'm squeezing a minivan into a tiny parking space in an underground parking garage, it's the most useful rule ever! It would be impossible to park without it. I'm pretty sure it's the only van in the mission, and I don't know why the mission even owns a van, but I love being able to drive to all of our appointments. It's so much more efficient.
Elder Laceste, like I mentioned last week, is from the Phillipines. He's been out 3 months more than me. He moved to Vancouver 8 months before he came out but he still had to become fluent in English here in the missionfield. He can speak tagalog. This week we pretty much just tracted the entire time. It's interesting how angry people get when it is cold outside. It's cold here in Canada, and the Canadians have a trick to staying warm that has been passed down from generation to generation. It's called don't go outside.
It's Christmas time and we are trying to make plans for Christmas. We've received permission to stay at the incredibly amazing zone leader apartment for Christmas Eve and we are going to be at the Puertos for dinner. They use a magicjack, which is a phone service that goes through the internet and only costs $20 a year. So that's where we will be calling home from. I think I am going to wrap all of my presents in pages from old Family Resources magazines, just to make things more exciting. We will be having a giant Christmas zone conference in London tomorrow with 3 zones. I'll be able to get any packages that were mailed to the mission home at that time.
So I will be calling home on Christmas afternoon to wish my family a happy Christmas, but for those that I won't be able to speak to, Merry Christmas! Always remember that Jesus Christ is the reason for our celebration and enjoy the time that you have to spend with friends and family.
--Elder Wade
