It's been a nice week. It was weird to not proselyte so much and it reminded me how rewarding missionary work is. It's like exercise; it takes a lot of discipline but you feel all good afterwards and get stronger.
I'm glad my SD card got home. Unfortunately I lost my camera cord so I don't know how I'll be emailing pictures for awhile. It's too bad too because this week we went hiking and got some really pretty ones. I'll find a way to get them to you.
So Christmas Eve was basically eating pizza and talking to you all and then we went to our Zone Leader's flat for a sleepover! They have a nice flat in Lancaster and you can throw bread to the seagulls and ducks and it's hilarious. We woke up about 5:30 am on Christmas morning and drove up to the Lake District to hike Scafell Pike, the highest peak in England.
This shows you the American pride of missionaries in England. I feel like English culture doesn't like the outdoors or adventure as much, but we demanded it. So we went on this super loopy tiny European style road for like an hour and ended up near some cottages with a huge lake spanned by sharp mountains. There were stone walls over dark green grass and hundreds of sheep with some little cottages and a church. All around us was fog and the sun slowly rose over this massive lake. We started hiking basically towards a cloud at the top. So Elder DiPeri, myself, and our zone leaders all went up what we thought was the highest peak in England.
The hike was fun, not super hard but a good reminder of my love for backpacking. At the top it was frigid and SNOWING! We loved it because we got snow on Christmas Day in England and we sang hymns and left a Book of Mormon on the top hahaha. I filled a waterbottle with spring water from the top as there was a small waterfall the whole way down. It was amazing! I think it may have been one of the coolest places I've ever been. I decided that Matt would love it the most. It was like a mixture of The Hobbit, Skyrim, and Braveheart. Hopefully I can get some pictures to you all.
But the sad part. At the end we asked someone what we hiked and it was actually Great Gable, the seventh highest peak. Needless to say, we're going back.
On Boxing Day we watched some movies. My companion wanted to see Frozen and we saw some other film called Rio. Entertainment is silly these days haha. The rest of the week was normal. Church was really good, I taught Gospel Principles and Elder DiPeri gave a talk and our mission president visited. This week we get New Year's Eve partially off and New Year's Day off. Our plan is to hit the mountains again hahaha.
Fun to talk to you all on Christmas Eve. It was probably the strangest experience of my life though. It was kind of like you weren't actually there though, but like you recorded a video that I got to watch at Christmas haha. I was really nervous and jittery the whole time. I think I realized that since I haven't had older sibling scrutiny I have less pressure to be mature so it was like bringing that back on to see if I have brought forth fruit meet for your expectations. I'm on my only little journey of self-discovery and you saw me before the edges are browned! But it was sad at the end to just realize how much I love you all and how families really are meant for eternity. Thanks for your questions and I was impressed how much you all actually know and care about my mission and emails. If I seemed negative about England I'll have to explain one day, but I do hope to take you all back! It's a crazy place and even crazier to be a missionary in.
Love you all and Happy New Year (it's not really my new year because I am a Chinese man at heart)!
Elder Webb
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