Elder Davis has a favorite Christmas movie. It means a lot to him because, if there is one thing Elder Davis doesn't like, it's having to watch a movie he has already seen. But his favorite movie, "It's a Wonderful Life", he watches nearly every Christmas season and so far, he hasn't gotten tired of it. Which is why our YSA's got the mixed blessing of watching Elder Davis's favorite movie on Christmas Eve.
Mixed blessing, you say? You will see....read on.
Christmas Eve 2012 happened to fall on a Monday. So what to do for FHE? Most of the young people would be with family right? Well, we found out that Russians don't celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25th....they celebrate on January 7th. Latvians celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25th but it isn't as big a holiday to them as New Years Day is. Elder & Sister Davis decided to have a small Christmas dinner on Monday night for those YSA's who didn't have anyone to spend Christmas with. And invite everyone else to come watch a movie. We ended up with 7 people around our table for a ham dinner. We had invited the Adams and they cooked half the meal (they have become dear friends). By 7:00PM we had 12 people on couches and chairs waiting for the movie to start.
Sisters Davis, Adams and Alex "the Marine".
We can never remember Alex's last name but he works at the American embassy, thus the nickname.
The Christmas tree gave us ambiance...
Homemade toffee and peanut brittle, caramels and brownies...
They were just for snacking. We had pie for dessert.
Sister Davis had been waiting for months to make her frozen berries and peaches into Christmas pies and with Sister Adams pumpkin pie we had plenty. Berry pie is a Sister Davis Christmas tradition.
The movie is in English with English subtitles for those who can read English. This is the mixed blessing part....dinner was nice and dessert was great but Anatolijs doesn't speak a lick of English. He has told us through an interpreter he sure wishes he could communicate with us. He started the movie with eyes wide open but he was soon fast asleep on the couch!
Juris probably didn't understand much of the movie either but the story got lots of laughs and everyone agreed that Jimmy Stewart's acting skills were top notch. Donna Reed was pretty believable, too.
Alex was only pretending to be asleep! Lauris had seen the movie just two days before and he liked it so well, he came over to see it again. He is now a "It's a Wonderful Life" fan.
After pie and ice cream everyone headed out into the cold and snowy night...except for Juris. He hung back and Sister Davis finally figured out why. He had given us a Christmas present that very night but we hadn't had time to open it and he wanted to watch us open it. Elder Davis started the process. We discovered that the paper was glued to the box. Juris told us he didn't have any tape so he glued it on. Unfortunately, the glue was so globbed on, it hadn't dried yet and Elder Davis started getting glue all over his hands and clothes.
It was a rather large box and we couldn't begin to guess what could be in it. Juris was so excited he kept taking pictures of us opening it. You can see our mouths drop open because it was a big surprise!
This was one of those great gifts that you will never forget. It involved a lot of time and skill to make and he was proud of it...and he gave it to us. These are the moments you live for on your mission...not because we got a gift that is priceless but because we got a gift of love. But now the question arises... how on earth we are going to fit that in our suitcase? It will be a challenge getting it home but it will be worth it to have the memories of this night forever.
It truly is " A Wonderful Life" for Elder and Sister Davis.
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