Highlights from December part 1

I thought I would share some of the highlights from this special month.
They celebrate here the four Sundays of Advent, the first two focusing on the coming of Christ the first time and the second two focusing on the second coming of Christ.  Each Sunday they light a candle in the Advent wreath or Adventskranz.  We had a beautiful event on the first Advent Sunday, December 3.  There is a choir from Switzerland of young adult members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints under age 30.  They are outstanding!  They performed two Christmas concerts and one was in a small village called Waldburg, 15 minutes from us.  Our Branch was responsible for finding the venue and advertising the event.  We have less than 30 active members, so I was worried about having a large enough audience to make it worth the 2+ hour drive the choir members would make that evening.  We were thrilled that about 130 people attended!  The Spirit of Christ filled the hall as they sang one gorgeous song after another and welcomed in the Christmas season.  We were excited to have less active members of the church and people not of our faith in attendance.  This is such a beautiful way to give people a positive impression of the members of our church.  As missionaries, we are grateful for events like this to help us share the gospel with others.

We attended the ward Christmas party held by the Dornbirn, Austria ward on December 16.  We have made many wonderful friends in that ward, so we are always excited to be invited to their events.  Their theme was "Let Him In".  They had a lovely program with members sharing scriptures about the Savior in different languages.  Most congregations have members from many different countries. We sang Christmas hymns between the parts. The new Bishop spoke as well.  Then the Primary children acted out the Nativity from the Bible.  Santa visited and gave each child a little gift.  We enjoyed a lovely pot luck dinner.  We have a new missionary in Dornbirn who just arrived the day before.  He is Elder Hilton from South Jordan, Utah.  We were excited to welcome him!

Elder Hilton and Elder Bushman