Georgia Christmas 2013

It is over so fast!

Does it strike any of you that way?  We have had a wonderful season.  I think it has been mainly our opportunity to focus on the Savior and his gifts to mankind and to us personally.  It has also been strengthening to us as we have had many opportunities to teach and ponder the testimonies of prophets through the ages who have testified of his coming and teachings.  We have loved this time out of the materialistic demands of life.

Just so you know, we were attending to mission business along with incorporating Christmas traditions.
These are the sisters in our district - Sister Waycott, and Sister Hathaway at our 2nd last district meeting of the year in the morning of Christmas Eve.  They are such fun, and are excellent missionaries.  We had to lead the training for part of it.  Our assignment was to discuss how to teach "enduring" to the end to our investigators.

Later, we shared dinner and Christmas Eve Family Night with the young Elders and three of the people we are working with.  It was a small gathering, but that is about all that will fit.  We have exactly 8 chairs.

Ready for dinner!

Our special guests were:

Robin, who lives here without any family.  She is currently taking lessons with the Elders.  She brought a delicious chocolate pie.  Her rental place has no heat, as the landlord is currently renovating.  She gets a deal for the inconvenience, but it is cold, so we invited her to come early.  We decided to invite her to do Christmas visits at the nursing home with us.  She said she had never been to a nursing home and asked what we did there.  We said "Come and see."  It turned out to be a sweet experience for all of us.  We came away feeling more of the Christmas spirit than we could have generated on our own.

 Sister Hooda, our less active friend from E India.  She seldom leaves her house, so it was a real privilege to have her accept our invitation.  She brought us an amazing electric frying pan.  We have become accustomed to our small utensils, so this seems like luxury!  We may have tacos at New Years after all.

Elder Schlaich, and Elder Cawley, whitewashed into our area with the last transfer.  Elder Schlaich is new from the MTC.  His home is in Ogden. Elder Cawley is our District Leader.  He is from California.  They were also here on Christmas Day as they made their calls home to family.

Elder Schlaich just had his first experience cutting his own hair.
He said he made a mistake, and there was nothing he could do
 but even things up.  We assured him that it would grow,  and
we would take another picture then.

Bill, who lives alone, in a home behind us a few blocks and walks everywhere.

Everyone had gone before I remembered to take pictures.  This is Bill.  He is our nearest neighbor, and has just started back to church.  He thought it was really funny that his gift from the ward was written to Elder Gibson.  We told him he would have to prepare himself so the title would be true.

We all enjoyed being together.  It is always beautiful to sing the carols of Christmas and contemplate the gift of the Savior.  Doug had found an article in the 2008 New Era called -Advent Calendar: Prophecies of Christ's Coming -  that could be read each day leading up to Christmas.  You might want to look at it for another year.  We used it as a springboard to discuss how it made us feel to know that Christ's birth was foretold by prophets so many years ago, and how that is meaningful to each of us personally.  We then read the well known texts from the Bible and Book of Mormon.  You can always feel a special spirit when you talk about the Savior, especially on Christmas Eve.  We love Christmas Eve!


Santa Really Does Come to Georgia ! !

How does he do that in the middle of the pouring rain?

The Christmas Eve puzzle

New PJs  These were designed by our enterprising
Mission leaders in the Atlanta mission.  They changed the letters especially for us who transferred to the Macon Mission.  We wondered how we could best use
a t-shirt.  Elder Castleton has it all figured out!

The Santa layout!  As you see, my Santa is always good at surprises.

Opening presents in the not-so-early hours
on Christmas morning.

Christmas Day

This is Kathy who came with some of her family to spend Christmas Day.

She didn't have any pictures of herself, so we took a few so she could give one to her mama for Christmas.

We had warned her that we would have left-overs instead of cooking twice.  She thought that was a great idea, and really, everything tasted even better the next day.  Doug was so cute reading our Christmas books from the  library, to Caleb while Kathy and I fiddled with the picture taking and printing.  Why didn't we take a picture of that?









Doug has been feeling a bit puney since Christmas however.  He was all dressed ready to go out on Friday, and suddenly got the chills - like he does, which indicates a fever.  He has been taking long 4 hour naps since.

He really wanted to go to meetings today, but he was still asleep when it was time to go, and when I returned at noon, I could see he had been up and got dressed in his missionary clothes, but he was sleeping so soundly he didn't even know I was home.  It is now mid afternoon, and he is still asleep.  Soon, I'll wake him for the chicken noodle soup fix.  We'll have the Young Elders give him a blessing tomorrow when they are over to use our computer.  It is hard to regain momentum when he is sick, as we never know when we can set up appointments.  Hopefully it will be all out of his system before the New Year starts!