Heder Mission Moments: Christmas celebration at mission home and member dinner on Christmas day, Dec. 29th, 2015

Happy Holidays Everyone,

I so enjoyed our first Mediterranean Christmas. Orange and lemon trees with their bright colored fruit naturally decorate the streets and it looks so fun. It doesn't get cold enough to freeze so all the nurseries have lots of flowering plants. The cyclamen plants are my favorite in red, pink and white. Lots of poinsettias around and lots of plants with berries. Christmas Day was in the high 60's and we had our car windows down on the way to the church as we went in to provide a dinner for members. Glorious!

A couple days before Christmas I thought it would be nice to share orange rolls with my neighbors. I didn't really have time because I was also trying to cook for Christmas Eve etc. but I thought of my Mom and my sister and I knew that THEY would do it, so I got going on the project. Then with orange rolls in hand I started delivering. I had to ring many doorbells and not everyone answered but those that did were surprised and kind. They had never seen an orange roll but since oranges are everywhere right now I thought they would be a hit. They wanted to give something back to me as well, so several sent me home with little plates of what is clearly the traditional Greek Christmas cookie treat (these round shortbread cookies covered with powdered sugar and ginger honey cookies.) The bakeries have huge trays of these cookies because everyone buys them at Christmas. I was offered drinks as well, and though I declined them, I'm pretty sure they would have helped me get through some of the chaos that came later :) and had several discussions about why I was here and why I would move to Greece during such hard times. Some of them are trying to move to the States. Most of the people have heard about Mormons because of Mitt Romney. I guided them to lds and mormon.org where they could watch videos about Christ's birth and see a Christmas message my our church leaders. Yeah!

On Christmas Eve we had all the missionaries in Athens over for dinner and a nice devotional. During the day we had several missionaries who skyped home to their families from the mission home while the sister missionaries helped me cook for the Christmas Day dinner for the members who didn't have family or anywhere to go on Christmas Day.We prepared ham and turkey, mixed vegetables and potatoes (augraten potatoes). None of my missionaries or senior couples had heard of these "funeral" potatoes so we just called them cheesy potatoes. We didn't have as many people as we thought would come on Christmas but the missionaries ate the leftovers later that day during our Christmas Day activities in Acropoli.

We had missionaries on Skype with their families all day long and we got to poke our faces into a few calls and say Hello. I have always been on the other side of the skype call as the parent. I must tell you it was wonderful to see how happy the missionaries were after talking with their families. Pure JOY, so great! They were excited about life and just glowing, really :) This energy went into some fun games that we played and the white elephant gift exchange was legendary; they were so creative with their gifts.

Of course we loved getting to talk with our own kids later that night as we got back to the mission home. That was a real treat. Christmas morning with just Alinda and Marie, and then a day spent with the missionaries--as crazy as it all gets--was a memory worth holding on to.

Lots of love, LeeAnn

P.S. The last two days we have been reading the Book of Mormon (the whole thing) with the missionaries. It took two 12 hour days to do it but it was an amazing experience with our missionaries.

Since a couple of days before Christmas, Lee and I have been experiencing a whole new level of mission insanity. A little more than a month ago, my Assistants came into my office and told me that we needed to have an activity plan for the missionaries during the days between Christmas Eve and New Years--because culturally it's not a good thing to be proselyting during this holiday. The Greeks don't attend Church or even seem to pay attention to these domed edifices all around the City most of the year, but for this week and for Easter, it's a different religious fervor.

So we planned service projects and a zone conference, and activities and games and dinners and a Book of Mormon Read-a-thon, and more food, and more activities, etc. In the end what it translates out to be is completely nuts. We have just two senior couples in Athens, and one is the dedicated office couple, pretty much tied there. The other is a CES couple and not really available most of the time when you need help shopping or cooking, etc.

So LeeAnn has been shopping and cooking non-stop. If Greece had just one Costco where we could buy in bulk, it would be a Christmas miracle. But that doesn't exist, so shopping is the quintessential small shop, small cart, big expense, long-term torture. LeeAnn has managed to learn what stores carry what items--but that has hardly helped her speed up the shopping experience--because she can only get small amounts each place, and she needs to go to several places (fighting traffic and the lack of parking) to get anything. A pasta meal for the missionaries requires three different stores. French toast requires two store trips. Christmas dinner resulted in at least 5 trips between the two of us.

Then there is the cooking part. LeeAnn is a good cook for groups. She's cooked for large things before. But this holiday schedule has meant cooking at least one large meal each day (sometimes two) for the past week--and there's still a few days to go. We get up early, get started early, and finish cleaning and go to bed late. Then the alarm goes off and it's time to start chopping and mixing again.

Today as we were nearing the end of day one of the Read-a-thon, and after two meals were made and served and cleaned up--she leaned over and said, "after this week, I'm never cooking again." She didn't smile when she said it, so she might be serious. In which case I'm going to lose some weight.

Bill O. Heder

Greece, Athens Mission