On Saturday night, we had our Ward Christmas Party (see the pictures below). It was at the Long's house, and it was absolutely fantastic. Dylan was there and so were a lot of less active members, as well as nearly a dozen non-member friends of members. Many of them were very curious about who we were and many of them had some connection like a grandson who was a member or something. The entertainment at the party was also a lot of fun, and of course his garage and man cave were fantastic. One of the members told the story of the original St. Nick, which was really cool and you should look up when you get the chance.
On Sunday, there were a couple cool things. For one, Elder Higashi came back to pick up some stuff and attend a baptism for someone he had helped teach. So I got to see him, and like every other recently returned missionary I've heard from, he said that home sucked. Also on Sunday, we watched the Christmas devotional, and that was really good. I liked how it talked so much about the peace and comfort that comes during this time of year through the Spirit. So remember to strive to always have the Spirit with you during this hectic time of year.
Now I can finally tell you why today was so crazy. So there is this trail in Corona called Skyline that you can supposedly see the ocean from the top. It is where we hiked the last time we went hiking, though we sort of just went off and forged our own path that time, rather than following the legitimate Skyline trail. Since we'd heard a lot of people talk about it, and this time we decided that we could do it. I mean how hard could it be right? We met at the church at 9:00 in the morning and were finally organized and ready to go by 9:45. So we headed to the trailhead and started walking, and walking, and walking. I felt like a pioneer child for a while. It was a nicely kept trail, probably 10 or 12 feet wide, level dirt/gravel, but it was very steep at times. But we just kept going. After about an hour, we passed some hikers on their way down, and we asked them how far to the top. And they told us about 3 more miles! But we are determined, so we keep going. All told, it took us 2 hours to go up, and another 2 to come down, 12 miles round trip! We were hot, tired, dehydrated(half of them didn't have any water), and really, really, sore! Half of them had decided to turn around earlier, only 11 missionaries made it to the top. And when we got there, it was too smoggy to even see the ocean! So we rested for a bit and started the long hike down. I did get to hear the really cool story of one of the YSA Ward elder's recent converts, maybe I'll tell you some other time. But anyway, we got to the bottom around 2:00, went home, showered and ate, and it was 3:30. The Sisters needed to use the Family History Center to e-mail too so we let them go first. We went and shopped and did all the things we needed to, and got all of 5 minutes to e-mail President Mullen before we had to go out for our evening. Luckily we had a little time at the end of the day to email our families and send pictures.
So that was my week, I hope yours was a little more relaxing! I always look forward to hearing from you guys, and hopefully next week I'll have more time to respond to everyone.
See you soon,
Skyler