Christmas is an amazing time to be a missionary. While it is common for missionaries to be missing home and thinking about family traditions that make Christmas special to them, it is remarkable to be a representative of Jesus Christ at a time when everyone is celebrating His birth.
To celebrate Christmas as a mission, we invited each zone to plan their own Christmas party. Zone leadership did a lot of work to get everything prepared. Every party was different yet a ton of fun as missionaries gathered together to celebrate in these smaller groups.
What did the missionaries do? Here are a few highlights:
- Devotional that included Sister Barlow reading a Christmas story and sharing our family’s Christmas traditions.
- A great devotional where we watched “The Christ Child” and missionaries shared thoughts on the perspective of Mary, Joseph, the angels, and the shepherds. The impressions missionaries shared were really powerful.
- Dinners that ranged from pizza parties to a Mexican fiesta to a traditional Christmas ham. The homemade tortillas some friends made for the fiesta were especially good. And shout out to the Kingsport Relief Society for offering to prepare the meal for the Kingsport Zone.
- Decorating gingerbread houses, but often with a twist. While some did gingerbread houses others recreated stories from the scriptures.
- A Christmas piñata.
- A visit from Santa Clause.
- A corn hole tournament.
- A pickle ball tournament, included a huge bracket to track the winners.
- White elephant gifts.
- A game from Elder Jentzsch called “A Dog. A Cat.”
- An egg nog chugging contest.
- Ugly sweater contests.
- Basketball, spikeball, and volleyball.
- Lots of other music and games.
We also had the opportunity to attend the Nativity that was put on by the Chattanooga Stake. It was absolutely incredible! For three days they completely transformed the stake center into a walk through experience of the nativity, beautiful displays of art, and so many talented stake members who provided music. We are already looking forward to attending it again next year.
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Barlows in TKM 