Christmas Party at Sun Moon Lake December 14, 2015

We had our ONE holiday of the year this past week. The annual mission Christmas party! We took a bus up to Puli to go to Sun Moon Lake! I was kinda bummed it was at a place that I had already been to, but it was still awesome! Seeing all my friends and fellow missionaries was a great Christmas present. We had some time to see the lake and hit up the souvenir shops. Then the best part of the day.... Buffet. Unlimited steak and unlimited mochi. 'Nuf said. Then a great Christmas devotional. Several missionaries are going home this week so they all had opportunities to share their reflections on their missions. Reflections are one of my favorite things. You get to hear a fully experienced missionaries insights and advice, nothing beats it! One of my favorite things that was shared was one Elder likened missionary work to the building of Salt Lake temple. During the building of the temple it was discovered that there were cracks in the foundation. Brigham Young then had the decision to either redo the foundation or build a smaller temple. We all know what happened! This is much like missionary work in the fact that everyone comes out on their missions with cracks in their testimony's foundation. However, we all have the opportunity to rebuild our foundations. This is why missionary work is awesome and why it really is ordained of God. Being able to go out at a young age and finding out what the cracks are in our foundation so that we can go rebuild it is a huge blessing. Anyways, the work in Minxiong is a little hard right now. We got fang'ed a million times this past week which means we had some really long empty trips. That being said, Elder Mitton and I are still having a great time! I bought a guitar last week for 2400 NT dollars (approx. 65 US). I'm stoked to go play it later! There's a ton of Xmas decorations around Taiwan so that helps with the spirit, but from what I've heard not very many people actually celebrate Xmas. Elder Mitton has some Josh Groban Christmas music though so that helps! happy holidays all!

-Elder Poon