We had a wonderful Christmas Day in the Dominican Republic. It will be our last one so we made the best of it. At 10:00am we had all 9 office Elders over to our apartment to enjoy “Christmas Morning Brunch”, at tradition in the Johnson home. Hna. Johnson prepared food yesterday and all morning to have a very large spread ready for the Elders.
Hna. Johnson prepared her “Cowboy Breakfast”. It included Bacon, two different kinds of pork sausages (in the DR we were lucky to find any!), scrambled eggs with plenty of salsa available, German pancakes and biscuits & gravy. There was lots of fresh fruit and we also had three different kinds of juice and milk or chocolate milk. Wow, it was good.
Normally you don’t think of having dessert for breakfast but this was brunch and since we didn’t finish eating until after noon, dessert was appropriate! And… it was good, listen to this, we had strawberry shortcake with lots of fresh strawberries & whip cream and we had Hna. Johnson’s homemade pumpkin pie with ice cream on top. Mmmm Goood!
The AP’s had an emergency come up so they were an hour late for the brunch. Fortunately there was a ton of food so there was plenty for them when they finally came.
What would Christmas be without presents? Hna. Johnson also prepared a Christmas gift for each Elder. It wasn’t much but the gift had a box of cordial cherries, Dominican fudge and homemade chocolate chip cookies. They also received “Zebra” pens, a blue and black. These pens are a favorite of all the Elders but they can only be purchased as Price Smart. The item in their Christmas gift that was the biggest hit was a small model truck. The Elders played with them and rolled them all over the tables and floor.
Believe it or not today is a “regular work day” for the missionaries in the mission. The Elders still had appointments to keep and contacts to make so they couldn’t stay very long at our apt. Elder Grant and Elder Falor even have a baptism service for one of their converts scheduled for this afternoon.
At the end of our meal we invited the Elders to read scriptures with us before they left. Hna. Johnson and I have finished reading the Book of Mormon in Spanish and are now reading the New Testament. With a little forethought and planning we were able to plan Luke 2 as today’s chapter to be read.
The reason the AP’s were late for our brunch was to prevent mission rules from being broken today. A tip was received that the parents of a Dominican Elder were planning to come with the whole family to visit him in his apartment for Christmas. Early this morning the AP’s had to transport the Elder and his companion to a different area so his parents couldn’t find him. They can still phone their son like every other parent but they cannot visit their Elder while his is serving. Dominican parents visiting their missionary is a particular problem here because many of our Elders parents live right here in the capital.
This afternoon and evening we concluded a great Christmas day by talking to our family on the phone and Webcam for about four hours. A perfect ending to a perfect day.
No comments:
Post a Comment