Christmas time

It is alarming for me to think about the fact that it was on December 17th 1997 that I entered the MTC. That surely cannot be 12 years ago!!!
Yet, it is, I am old enough to have a clear and vivid memory of something that was 12 years ago.
Tonight I was at the Carol concert in the stake centre. We sang "Far, Far away on Judea's Plains". A carol with which I became familiar only in the MTC and in Russian. Even to this day I will subconsciously sing the chorus in Russian, I still can not sing it in English. I found myself crying as I allowed the memory of the music to transport me back to the place where I first learned it and heard it sung. I was truly blessed in the people with whom I was surrounded at that time. I thought so then as I watched them influence me for good and I think so now as some of the things that they taught me change what I do today. I had two companions in the MTC. Both quite different from the other and yet, both have influenced me and touched my life in ways that I treasure.
This hymn is only one of the things that I can not do without thinking of them.
I think part of me will always yearn for a closeness that may never return in mortality. They were, like the friends I made throughout my mission, an intrinsic part of me and I felt myself connected to them eternally. I miss that closeness even 12 years later. I wish I could have it now, but what I hope is that it will be there when mortality is passed.
Surely that is one of the most profound and life changing gifts that Jesus Christ has gifted to us. The reality of hope and the vision of something good and precious and worthwhile to hope for.
I loved my companions in the MTC and the district that we were a part of, I felt like we were gathered for a special and grand purpose, at the time I focused that feeling towards the missions we were serving at the time, now, I wonder if it might have been that our friendship was the grand purpose. It never leaves me, I hope that it is there with them too.
Sometimes it is difficult for me to picture Christ as a baby. I know that it is a reality that he was born in those humble circumstances described in the scriptures, and I have gratitude that it is so. It is as a resurrected man that he has blessed me and that I began to know during my time as a missionary; it is that man that I think of, even at Christmas time.
I am thankful for his birth, for his life, for his death and resurrection, and I am profoundly grateful for his interaction in my life especially through the gift of true and lasting (although geographically distant) friends to love for more than a lifetime.