Mom got to celebrate her birthday several times. The first with the Pitts family and the other when Travis and Jordan came. It was nice to have a touch of home in Phoenix to celebrate.
During the Pitts stay we took a trip to see the lights at the Mesa Temple. We also went to visit our good friends the Brems who were visiting their daughter Emily in Mesa. That night we also went to see Kim Rhoten. Uncle Reed was staying with her. It was good to see and visit with him after all these years.
We celebrated my birthday a week early with the Pitts and then again with Travis & Jordan when they came on January 3rd.
Good thing we weren't playing for anyone but ourselves...but it was fun playing the chimes to Christmas songs.
Just before our nativity, we were interrupted with a call from Santa to Gavin. He just wanted to make sure he still believed before he made his stop
Each year it is tradition to read the Christmas Story and use the children to act it out. This year our actors were small in number. Lars & Linda Andersen came up for Christmas Eve with Sara & Erik. Before they moved here to Tempe they were a part of our annual Christmas Eve activities.
We especially enjoyed having Tyler home with us for 2 weeks. We thought he might get ansy staying with us that long, but he seemed to enjoy just being with everyone. We even put him to work teaching the missionaries during our interview training. His love and ability to teach and connect with the missionaries was fun to watch. Since he entered the school or business at BYU this fall,, he has worked especially hard this semester and was rewarded with all A-s.
For our Christmas Zone Conference we chose to split up the mission into 3 days of attending the temple and having a Christmas meal and sharing of a Christmas devotional and songs by selected missionaries. It was a very special experience to be able to first go to Snowflake, Arizona to the temple, with all of our reservation missionaries and then drive back to Polacca for a special meal prepared by our senior couples. It was a great trip up their because we were able to experience some of that white stuff that we don't see down in Phoenix. We arrived back home about 11:30 p.m. and then started the proceedure the following two days for our missionaries in Flagstaff and then in the valley. It was a spiritual and rewardng outing for everyone as we all got to see the temple lights after attending the temple. I must admit, I was ready for a long winters nap after it was over. It was quite an interesting experience as we tried to move about 230 missionaries during those three days. The Lord blessed us though and all went well.
It was a busy week for us as we had transfers and then also prepared a meal for all of our Stake President's and ther wives. Elder & Sister Pickard, our area seventy, also shared the evening with us. We currently have 17 stakes presidents in our mission, unfortunately not all could come. We had a special treat as our Traveling Elder Angels came to sing to us. They all have beautiful voices and do an amazing job singing a Capella It was a wonderful evening of sharing.
We didn't have time to have a full blown Sisters Conference, so we had a mini one and all went to breakfast at I-Hop. This was just before 3 of our wonderful sisters left to go home. We are down to 18 sister missionaries now. They are precious.
