too many blessings

Hi guys

Yea so I know Mom was the only one, maybe Laura by now, who watched the Christmas devotional last night, but it was way good. There was one thing I liked that President Monson said. Actually I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it made me think about memories of Christmas. Christmas, the Christmas season and all that. If you asked me what I got for Christmas in any given year I would have no idea, and probably wouldn’t be able to remember if I tried. What I do remember is being together on Christmas morning. That fun feeling of family and all. Dad cooking breakfast, hanging out together all day…fondue on Christmas Eve (oh my gosh I am going to miss that), going to the ice show and all those festivities. Things like that. That’s what I remember about Christmas. Made me consider that the gifts don’t really matter much at all (Yes, I knew this before, but I yesterday I kinda felt it more). They’re really nice and fun and all that, but just being together in that Christmas spirit is what the best part really is. So among many other excellent things from the devotional, that’s what got me the most. Lovely.

My companion and I are trying to get a Christmas card going, but it seems to keep on not working out! We were hoping to be able to get them all made up today, but I don’t know if we will. Dangit. Last week I went and bought some new sheets cause my other ones had a gigantic hole in them, I think I mentioned (I must have sharp toenails or something). Laura you’ll like this – I found some ones on a clearance rack kinda thing for just $10 so I got em. But – they’re batman sheets!!! Ha ha its pretty funny. Legitimate Dark Night batman sheets. Oh yea! Funny stuff.

Earlier this week we did some service for this awesome old guy in the ward who lives in this house that been in his family since the 1700s! He’s got this gigantic OLD barn they’re restoring parts of and turning it into an art school. So we were helping level out this dirt bank thing. Shoveling. It was hard work, but man, I just loved it! For one, it was really nice to be out doing physical work for a change. But it also reminded me a ton of building jumps! It was sweet, I loved it.

Also last Monday, we watched It’s a Wonderful Life. Geeze that movie is great! Except it makes me want to fall in love in black and white. And dress like the people back then. But I already wanted to do that. Sweet style. Good flick. I learned some good things from it. George Bailey is great. Real good example of some great attributes. The old guy we helped at his barn totally reminds me of an old George Bailey. He’s just always all happy and kind and helping everyone. Good guy. I love all the wonderful people I get to meet out here. People can be so great! Unfortunately there are also people that bum me out big time. It’s a give and take. But yea, Wonderful life, wonderful movie. I want to watch it again.

So uh… We found this girl this week. Her brother is inactive and we went to stop by him. He wasn’t there, she was. So we talked to her. She is amazing! I think I’m in love with her. Not that kind of love. Ha! We had this awesome talk on her porch for a while. There was such a strong spirit. It brought her to tears. Its amazing, some people’s lives are so chaotic that if we can have a good sincere spiritual conversation with them, they can feel a very strong spirit, even if its not so obvious to us. At least not as powerful as it is to them. As it was to her. It was awesome. She is ready to change her life. She needs something new. Peace. Happiness. She’s ready to do it and I’m sure she is willing to test the evidence. If she really is, she’ll get an answer. So we told her we’d be in touch with her very soon. We left her a Book of Mormon and told her a bit about it and all. Because of the whole situation, which I won’t get into, we figured we’d call her a few days later. Her name is Brooke.

Saturday night it snowed. First time I’ve seen snow in CT! It was nice. My companion didn’t enjoy it so much, but I have some fond memories of walking through the snow at night. It was a little miserable, cold snowy and windy and all that. But I was making the best of it fortunately. Anyway, it got worse when all our appointments fell through. Wow I was so surprised about that. It never happens to us in Hartford. People are nothing but reliable around here. Ha. So we were starting to go about some of our back up plans when I got a call from a number I didn’t know and it was BROOKE! She was wondering when we could meet with her. Just so you guys know, this NEVER happens. We have to call everyone. No one ever calls us. Pretty much never. But Brooke called. Yes! So we were able to go over and talk with her again. She was by herself, and we can’t go in a house with a lonely woman unless there is another male around. So we couldn’t go in. She was a trooper and put her coat on and talked to us on the porch again. Another amazing lesson. We taught her about prayer and the Holy Ghost because it came up that she didn’t know how to pray. She’d never done it before. So we told her about it and then we all prayed on the porch. She said her first prayer right there. It was great! I love this girl. Her mom doesn’t like us though for some reason so we’ve been praying constantly that her mom’s heart will be softened and that we can continue to teach her. Finding people like this is probably the most exciting and fantastic thing in the whole wide world. Seriously. I haven’t been so excited in a long, long time as I was walking away from that second little chat with her in the snow. I was ecstatic! I gave Elder Pikyavit a big hug! It’s the most wonderful thing to see people like Brooke. Who’s lives aren’t that great, that we can help SO much, who are willing to do the things that will help them. Hard to describe.

So that was just great. There’s more to it that I’d like to share, but I won’t right now. It is getting really, really cold outside and its only going to get colder. Fortunately my warm coat has so far proved to be in fact a very warm coat. I love it. I love being warm when its cold outside. I love it! Winter is going to be tough here. Definitely. But I think I’ll be okay. The work is going to get hard cause no body is out and about like they were in the warmer weather. Less people to talk to, and people don’t answer their doors (darkness makes that worse too, like shorter days kinda thing). Hopefully I can keep my spirits up.

Natasha is going to get baptized this Saturday. She came to the devotional last night (Yes!) and expressed some “cold feet” emotions. We gotta go see her tonight. I tried to explain that because there is God, there is also satan. And satan hates you and wants you to hate life and now that you’re about to do the most important thing you have ever done in your life, he’s going to do EVERYTHING he can to stop you from doing it. I think she knows this and knows that she needs to get baptized. But she has been through some hell and I can totally see how she would be worried about doing this. I really hope and pray she will find the faith and courage to do this. She has to! She’s come so far!

Oh! Ha ha! Oh my gosh, I wish you all could see what we did for “service” the other day! We threw everything in a 3rd story apartment out the window of said 3rd story apartment! Ha ha it was so hilarious! Tables, chairs, microwave, boxes, junk wrapped up in blankets, everything! It was a mess! The apartment was a disgusting mess and we said we’d help clean it out. Turned out the best way to do it was to throw it all out the window! Then we had an insane massive pile of crap down on the yard. Seriously it was insane. So we moved it all out to the street. By some sort of incredible miracle, all this happened in less that 2 hours! Seriously you guys cannot even fathom how unbelievable that is. It blew my mind completely. I guess the point of all this is that it was really awesome and hilarious and fun throwing all this junk out the window. Probably something I’ll never do again. And you can imagine how much fun we were having doing it – 4 missionaries. Yes!

Christmas is going to be strange without everyone, but I’m definitely starting to feel the wonderful spirit of the season. So many wonderful memories we have don’t we! Our family is blessed more than I can believe! I am blessed more than I can believe. I really can’t believe it sometimes how much of a blessing it is to be on a mission. I could have never understood it before I came out. Ever.

Lovely love love familia!

David Elder Kunz