Goodbye 2013!

I have no photos this week.  Well, I did take one of Elder Jones taking a nap with his mouth open, but I was warned there would be retribution if I published it...

Christmas really was quite different this year.  We were not at our own home, so it did not seem lonely or odd, just different.  We spent all of Christmas Eve day in a Christmas devotional for the Philly and Valley Forge zones and then we took a load of late Christmas presents to New Jersey.  We traveled around to Cherry Hill, Woodstown, and ended up in Camden after dark in a Lexus with presents in the back.  Not too smart...but we got them all delivered.  We came back into Philly across the Ben Franklin Bridge and it began to snow lightly on us.  With the lights of downtown so colorful and the snow gently falling it was breath-taking.  I wanted that for my photo, but alas, I could not get a good shot as we were going to fast and could not pull over.  Christmas day we opened a few gifts and headed for dinner with 2 other couples.  It was very enjoyable.

This afternoon we spent 3 hours with the sister missionaries in our ward visiting partial member families.  Of the 6 we went to visit, only 1 family was home.  So we got a reality check on doing missionary work out of the office today.

We are realizing on this mission just how hard Heavenly Father and all of his angels have to work to protect these young missionaries as they proselyte.  This week another pair of our missionaries were held up at gunpoint (we had one about 3 weeks ago too).  All the robbers got was a phone, but the elders were a bit frightened.  Then today Corry got a phone call during church.  2 Sister missionaries had a car accident and their car was totaled.  They were not hurt except for the deployment of the air bags and the bruises from the shoulder harnesses.  We do pray daily for their health and safety!

We enjoyed eating on Christmas with our mission president and his wife and we learned from him that the calling of mission president is probably the hardest calling he has ever had.  He told us of some mission presidents who even have to have help to deal with the stress of the calling.  As we learn of the various situations they have to deal with daily, we can understand the difficulty of their job.  So we pray for them as well.  Actually we do pray for quite a few people--family, friends who are going through a hard time, missionaries, president and his wife, us...

2013 has been an eventful year.  Retirement in its fullness, renting our home and coming on this mission.  We are very happy for all 3 of these and we absolutely love serving in the Pennsylvania Philadelphia Mission.  We so appreciate the support of our family and friends and we do love keeping up with you through Facebook and e-mail.  Have a wonderful 2014!