A missionary's Christmas is always an unusual thing. For regular people, Christmas often means spending time with family, opening presents, and enjoying arrays of home-cooked meals. For missionaries, family contact is limited to a short phone call; presents sometimes fail to reach their destination in time; and food, though often plentiful, is spent far from families.
The elders in Pueblo Pintado, a chapter settlement an hour or so from Crownpoint, invited Elder Findlay and I to spend the night Christmas Eve. We agreed; the alternative was to stay in our trailer and act out the nativity story with two actors. The Pueblo Pintado elders' trailer was even more remote than ours; the only buildings in sight were the church — two connected double-wide trailers — and a few houses in the distance.
Before we left Crownpoint, I checked the mailbox one last time and returned grumbling. My package with the Christmas presents had been delayed on its way to the reservation and it looked like I wasn't going to open my presents on Christmas.
Christmas morning came. The other three elders were fast asleep until about 9:30; it was one of those rare days when leaders looked the other way when it came to sleeping in. I couldn't sleep past 8, however, so I called my parents. We talked for an hour or so then signed off. They were doing well, and so was I, and there wasn't much to talk about.
Still present-less, I gathered my coat around me and sat on the porch. This was the first Christmas ever where I didn't have a single gift to open under the tree, but it didn't bother me as much as it should have. The day was rather warm despite the snow that sat in a tranquil sheet as far as I could see — and, owing to the barrenness of the landscape, I could see quite far.
I grabbed one of the fifty copies of the Book of Mormon and took it with me. I re-read the Book of Mormon's unique Christmas story, the tale of a group of New World inhabitants who eagerly await the coming of the Messiah on the other side of the globe.
Merry Christmas, I said to myself. I sat on the porch for a while more, the happiest I'd ever been without presents.
should you have been bothered?
ReplyDeleteand I am not sure where you took the B of M.