Christmas

We had a different kind of Christmas this year. We were able to talk to some of our children, and had contact with the rest of them which was really nice! We miss them, especially at this time of year. I didn't get any pictures, but we spent Christmas Day with one of our Young Adults, Aaron, who is from the Caribbean and couldn't go home for the holidays. He was willing to come over and hang out with us. I am not a seafood fan, but he loves it, so we had salmon and roasted vegetables for dinner. Afterward, we played board games for the rest of the afternoon. It was fun, but much quieter than what we are used to with children around!

The mission office held onto Christmas packages that came in the mail until a couple of days before. We got some from Katy's family and from Carly's. Joey's and Katie's package came today. They all had very sweet and thoughtful gifts with cards and pictures made by the grandchildren. We especially love the family pictures the kids send us too.

Jesse's children- Dylan, Sophie and Stella

Joey and Katie's kids- Daniel, Jackson, Scarlett, and Hayden.

Joey's kids

Jesse and Stella with her handmade gift

Abby's children- Tessa and Lucas

Our first great-grandchild, Lincoln.

Scarlett

Stella- she and Scarlett are both missing most of their front teeth

Tessa and Lucas

Joey's family

 

DECEMBER ADVENTURES

We went on a morning walk in Pentland Hills yesterday, and it was very cold! Last time we were out where there were sheep, everything was green. I guess it is still green underneat all the frost! 

It was very pretty out there!

Wednesday evening we went to a play in Falkirk. The office sisters invited us to go the night they would be there, so we bought tickets some time ago. They call it pantomime, for some reason. There is talking and singing, so I don't know why it's called that. The cast was very good in this community theater version of Beauty and the Beast, but it was very much geared toward kids. Our granddaughters would have loved it!

We went into the city for another few hours of Light the World with the missionaries. This time it was better, because we did a lot of Christmas caroling and we had music playing when there was no singing. We attracted the interesst of a serious Instagram person who had almost 300,000 followers on Facebook. She took a video and posted it. I missed seeing it because, apparently it was on her stories and it seems to have disappeared..It was pretty neat to get that extra publicity though.

For FHE we had an art gala/murder mystery activity. Some of the YA's planned it, and it was really good, but we didn't have many come. It could have been because of finals and projects being due at the end of the semester, but also maybe becaused they didn't want to dress up! Charles ended up being the victim of the murder/myster.

 

LIGHT THE WORLD

We had a chance to meet up with the missiionaries in Edinburgh Saturday for the Light the World initiative. It didn't work out quite as well as planned, but it was fun anyway. The best part was at the end when we started singing Christmas carols. People stopped to listen, and it bought the Christmas spirit. 

The rest of he missionaries will be going out again tomorrow, but we have some other things going on, so won't make it. We will be going to a concert of one of our YA's in the afternoon, and in the evening we're going to a play in Livingston with the sister missionaries from the office. 

 

Temple Trip and Romik's Baptism

We were blessed to be able to take Marah to the temple for her first time Friday. She was very excited about it. She also wanted to do the baptisms for her parents, grandmother, and aunt, who have passed away, and she might have been most excited about that. She was visibly moved. Since we were told by the temple that we needed to bring two more people with us, we had Julius and Johanna volunteer to go. The car we rented was advertised as a large SUV that could easily fit five adults, but it wasn't big at all! I rode in the middle in the back between the two other women, and we were quite cozy! Charles had to do all of the driving because neither he or Julius could have fit in the back of the car. Fortunately, he was able to make it the whole four hours each way!

Romik has been coming to our YA activities for a couple of months now, and he loves it. He has been meeting with the missionaries and even shared the Book of Mormon with his family in Punjab, where they are reading and studying it with their friends. He was baptized last night by his friend, Aaron.

Afterward, we had a Bob Ross painting activity. Bronte and Alicia headed it up, but I got all the materials and we set everything up. I bought paint, but we used some bottles that were in our closet. The painting required a lot of white, so I kept putting more and more of what I thought was white paint on my pallete, but it just didn't seem to work very well. Everything I mixed it into just smeared around. I finally gave up and didn't really finish it. I didn't find out until later when Charles noticed we had been using a bottle of white glue! Fortunately, I think we were the only ones, and others poured theirs out of the actual paint bottle!