A Christmas to Remember

Ok, I'm confessing that the first time we walked through the Christmas decorations at Menards I teared up thinking about being away from all our family for Christmas.  As we visited people in nursing homes and learned about so many that would have no one visit them on Christmas I realized that I have my husband and could talk to all my kids and grandkids and I am very blessed and definitely not without family! My siblings sent us gifts that filled our apartment and our hearts with Christmas joy.

We had a super busy and heartwarming day practicing true religion undefiled. We delivered gifts to, ate lunch with, or sang favorite Christmas carols with 5 people in 4 nursing homes.  We got to talk to or FaceTime with all of our kids and grandkids! Which was pretty tricky fitting around everything else, but so fun!  We went to a birthday party.  We fixed a turkey dinner for 12 of us, 6 of whom needed rides to get to our apartment. We had 2 from El Salvador, 5 from the Congo, 1 native Iowan, 1 from France and 3 of us from Utah!  It was crazy trying to communicate in 3 different languages! We talked to our moms! It was an awesome Christmas!

We had a great week!  We took treats to 4 veterans in the veterans home, took Alain to Iowa City at 6:00 am for an appointment with a specialist,  took him to lunch, the bank, the hospital to turn in paperwork and to request records for immigration, filed his unemployment claim, called his work to explain why he still can't work and called 2 other places to get him an appointment with another specialist.  We taught Nancy. We did family history with March Runner. We took Elysee grocery shopping and to the dollar store for cleaning supplies, taught her kids 2 nursery lessons, got Elder Barker to put youtubekidz on their new tablets, helped Edmond put online banking on his phone, searched for the car they want,and helped teach them a new member lesson.  We picked up Leas new glasses and took them to her at work. We visited more people and had a few more Christmas messages, then started in on the New Year messages. We took Manathan to an appointment and jump started their van twice. We had a great District Council with our great new District Leader, Elder Onstott! We had a super Christmas Eve Family Home Evening, and took the sacrament to 2 shut ins. We FaceTimed with the kids while the grandkids opened their gifts to each other when they got together after Christmas!  The Texas families were on different phones FaceTime ing too. It was loud and crazy and felt like we were with them for a while!

We got everything we wanted for Christmas!  Man are we ever blessed!

Isn't technology grand? Watching my grandkids in Texas open gifts from my son's tablet in Utah on Elder Quincy' s tablet in Iowa.

The Rodriguez family went to Cancun until Christmas Eve.  They brought us back gifts.

This church was hit by a fallen tree in tbe tornado and is falling in more all the time! Sad!

This is one of the first places we worked after the tornado.  There was a knocked down carport blocking in a member's car. Now there's this awesome garage! 

We had an awesome rainy day!

New district to lunch.

Pond in the rain.

Charlie smiling because his family were coming to see him the next day!

Carroll very happy about spending Christmas with his family the day before.

Iowa City

Sunrise on our way to Iowa City.

Christmas dinner fun.

Kevin's birthday party.

Some pictures our kids posted that warmed our hearts!

Lunch with Dawn Lough.

Visiting Paul and Lea

Singing with Barbara and Dina.

Our gifts to deliver

Sweet Max and his son.We plan to have a wonderful new year and hope you will, too!  Finished the Book of Mormon today as carefully planned, which required slowing down on my reading for the last week!  Thanks President Nelson for the challenge!