Chris puts together Aidens bike video game

My favorite Christmas present was a call to Kyle in Germany. He described the apartment he lives in. It is on the second floor of a very old mansion. The owners of the house are not Mormons but they love and care for Kyle and his companion. The landlord couple made them a breakfast cake for Christmas morning. Kyle's apartment is across the street form the train station. He admitted to me that Eisenhutte is probably the ugliest city in Germany. He told us that Christmas Eve they spent 2 hours trying to teach in the rain and walked home SOAKED. After changing they attended a fun ward party where Santa brought something special to them. All of the kids had to do some preformance to get their treat from Santa and the Elders were no exception. Kyle tried to sing a song. Luckily the ward children joined them. On Christmas day ( he called us Christmas evening for him but early enough to wake us up Christmas morning) they spent time with some members. These members feed them quite often and they are vegetarians. On Christmas day they bought sausage to make the day special for the missionaries. They were playing "Ticket to Ride" before I called him. He also gets to eat often with the branch president's family. They feed them fish dinners. The branch president catches fish in Norway. We asked Kyle to speak German so he quoted the Joseph Smith story in German. I asked what he misses from US he told us that he misses having a garbage disposal!!?? and steak and beef. He asked about all of his friends and talked to everyone. Aiden told him Merry Christmas and many other things he really didn't understand. Ismael left his Christmas celebration and hurried over to say hello for about half a minute. Kyle sounded great! He is positive and happy and healthy and I loved talking to him!

The rest of the day we opened presents, ate good food, visited Halls and played games. We had a lovely Christmas day.