A Christmas Story

There's nothing quite like writing on the laptop while sitting next to a warm fireplace.  I do love being home for the holidays.  Because of the mission, I haven't been home for Christmas since 2007.  I remember I got a couple of pretty cool presents that year, but my most memorable one from recent memory came last year.

As a missionary, Christmas can be kind of hard.  You're away from home, friends and family.  You'll spend it with your companion and any local church members kind enough to have you come over for the holidays.  The bright spot is that it is one of two days a year that you're allowed to call your family.

Anyway, I was serving in Jonesboro, Arkansas at the time.   I had been a missionary for around 15 months and had actually spent more time in Jonesboro than all my other areas combined, so I knew the members of the church there pretty well and was looking forward to having a good Christmas with them.  I really hadn't told my parents what I wanted for Christmas since there wasn't really anything a missionary really needs or is able to use (nearly all electronics are banned for us).  Besides, I think my parents already knew what to get me...

.......ties....

Ties are like the only part of a missionary's wardrobe that they get to switch up, so collecting ties became a fetish for me.   In fact, by the end of my mission, I had earned a reputation for having one of the best tie collections of any person in the field (I think I maxed out at 130 ties.  I've since cut back to around 80 right now).

This is a portion of my collection midway through the mission.  I always had the people who gave me ties sign the back of them, so they've become a wearable scrapbook of sorts.

These are two ties that I actually made myself with the help of a local ward member in Jonesboro.

Anyway, when Christmas came, I found many thoughtful gifts for both me and my companion--CD's, pens, stamps, dollar store toys, cash.  In all seriousness, those really are good gifts for missionaries.  Music is awesome for study sessions and car trips.  A nice pen writes much smoother and neater than the cheap ones.  Stamps let missionaries write people at home, since we can't call them.  We don't really have time to use anything else.  Of course, I had a few ties as well.  One in particular really caught my eye.  It looked strangely familiar....

Flash back to October.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints just finished their semi-annual General Conference.  The leadership of the church addresses us with spiritual messages and counsel for our time.  Watching General Conference is one of the best ways for people to get to know what our church is all about, and as a missionary, it was kind of like our Superbowl. 

The following week, I was writing my weekly email to my family.  I was talking about some of my thoughts from General Conference.  "I really enjoyed Elder Holland's talk on the Book of Mormon,"  "Elder Packer sure is getting old,"  "the choir sang some really beautiful numbers."  And in a throwaway comment, I said, "and Elder Yoon Hwan Choi wore the best tie of the conference."  For real, though;  most of the leadership of the church wears very conservative ties.  President Utchdorf will frequently wear some nice ones, but Elder Choi's was probably the prettiest tie I had seen in General Conference--ever.



You probably can't tell from the picture, but his tie has got some really cool designs in the pink spaces.  The color scheme is works really well with the white shirt.

Flash forward back to Christmas morning.  I was looking at a red tie with pink and white stripes on it that had a striking resemblance to Elder Choi's.

I would later find out that my mom had searched just about every department store in Utah looking for Elder Choi's tie.  She couldn't find an exact match (after all, he is from Korea and probably gets his ties from Korea), but she came pretty darn close. 

Did I really need another tie?  No; you can tell that just from the first picture I shared in this post.  But my mom knew that I kind of had a weird tie fetish and she really wanted to make me happy.  I will never forget that gesture of kindness that she did for me.  That's what the Christmas spirit is all about--loving kindness.  I pray that I may always remember that. 

Anyway, I hope you don't mind the change of pace from my normally light hearted comments.  But hey, it is my blog and I have said from day one that religion plays a large role in my life and will play a large role in here. 

Here's a link to the most recent General Conference of the LDS church: http://bit.ly/fHxK7h

And here's a link to Elder Yoon Hwan Choi's October 2009 Conference talk--it's a real good one: http://bit.ly/i6qkML