Christmas and Beyond!

I spoke in church today.  I shared President Nelson's message he gave at the Christmas Devotional.  He said rather than wish us a happy new year he would pray for us to do four things:

1)  Feel the deep, eternal love our Savior has for you personally

2)  Gain your own personal witness that Jesus Christ is the Son of God

3)  Take full advantage of the Savior's Atonement

4)  Use this holiday season to begin a season of even greater personal worship

These are our marching orders for 2024!  Let's work on them to prepare for our Savior's 2nd Coming.

Laura and Dave left the day after Christmas and arrived home tired but safely.  It takes 16 hours to get here from Utah/New Mexico.  We were so blessed to have them here with us.  Our neighbors, the Wests, invited us to a little get together at the BBQ area here at the apartments.  It turned out to be a LOT bigger than we anticipated.  They had tons of family show up.  We thought it would just be us, the neighbors upstairs (Al, Val and baby Billie) and Rex, our flat manager.  We took our Christmas ham, potatoes and carrots and they provided the rest.  When I asked what we could bring I asked what they were making.  Adam said, "What isn't she making!" and he was right!  There was ham, lamb, chicken, prawns and that was just the meat.  Tons of food!  We got into the lap pool which is next to the BBQ area.  It was our first time in the pool.  The pool is a lot bigger and deeper than I thought!  The water felt great and the weather was sunny.  It took 2 hours to get the party going and all the food from the apartment to the BBQ area but they wouldn't let us help in any way.  After the meal, we got Christmas crackers to pop!  Two people pull them and whoever ends us with the "big" end wins the prizes inside. We had never done it so it was new to us and we all put our crowns on!

The Wests, Adam and Shannon, have two awesome children:  Erin, age 9 and Hamish, age 7.  We bought them a little present but Christmas day was too crazy to give it to them so we waited.  They had soooo much company!

We waited a day or two to go over and give them their Magic Tracks racing car set.  We also gave Adam and Shannon a Book of Mormon which we had marked at a church activity.  We were a little apprehensive about giving it to them but they knew members in the past and were very gracious about accepting it.

The rest of the week was quiet since everything had closed down for Christmas. Tim kept busy looking for a flat for the new senior couple coming and I had a lot to catch up on since we'd played with the Kimmies for two weeks!  We also started setting up a flat in Tweed Heads.  Finally!  Tim made about 25 applications for a flat there and finally got one!  The only catch is that it doesn't have air conditioning, just ceiling fans!  We got sopping wet with sweat setting it up!  

Repair calls keep flooding us and every time we have a transfer, missionaries are short on dressers, garage remotes that work, kitchen utensils, desks and the list goes on and on.  We had to buy three lawn mowers so missionaries could mow their own lawns instead of a landscaping company which wasn't working out for us.  Our lawn mower died so one of those went to us.

We hope you all had a great Christmas and enjoyed your families.  I hope that Christ was at the center of all of your celebrations.  It was hard to find even a card that had the nativity on it here--everything was Santa. We are blessed to know the true meaning of Christmas and to let His life bless our lives.  Merry Christmas.