The Christmas Spirit is Alive and Well in the Office

The Christmas tree loaded up in the car

Q: How was your week?
A: Just another run of the mill week.

I said: Dad was looking at the missionary website yesterday and the office phone number is listed so he said, "Look, here's Austin's phone number if you want to call him." Haha it was kind of funny!
Austin replied:
And yeah, there's a good chance I'd answer the phone if you called that number! haha.

Q: Are you strictly in the office or do you have the opportunity to do any other teaching etc.?
A: We sometimes get out contacting. We don't really have anyone to teach. Especially because we have 4 actual missionaries in our area. We'll do skype lessons every once and awhile. And we occasionally do exchanges with other missionaries.

On Wednesday one of the senior missionaries serving here in Bucharest fell on the sidewalk and busted up her arm bad. They called Germany, then Salt Lake, pulled some strings, and they were on a flight home Friday morning. They ended their mission almost a year early. Too bad. But it was like their 4th or 5th mission, so maybe it was better. That means, yup, you guessed it, we took them to the airport at 4:30 Friday morning. Then that same day, we had our Christmas Zone Conference/Party. So we were busy before and after taking people places and to the train station and such. During the party, we have a little bit of training, big lunch, we watched the Christmas slideshow (which I made), and had our annual tie exchange. It was a fun, and long day.

We did something pretty funny this week. On our way walking into IKEA for lunch one day, we saw that they had started to sell real trees for Christmas. That got us thinking. We ate lunch, then went over to the big grocery store (basically Wal-Mart) and on our way out, we saw more trees. Asked the guy how much, he said 90 lei for all of them except that tall one in the back corner, it's 120 lei. After some aloud debating on whether the vehicle we brought could handle it, we got the big one. They wrapped it up in a net for us, and we loaded it in our car (see picture). It fit, just not all the way. But, we drove with the hazard lights on and made it back to the office without a ticket or injury. And the office couple serving here loved it so much, they payed for half of it! haha. So now we have a tree, lights, some decorations and stockings. The two assistants to the president who work in the office with us got stockings similar to the one you sent me, so we have all those hung up as well. The Christmas spirit is alive in the office.