The Week Before Christmas

This will be the first Christmas without one of our kids with us. I’m sad for that. But we will be able to spend Christmas Eve with my family in Payette at Aunt Myrna and Uncle Drexell’s house. As a kid, I would spend every Christmas Eve with them.  This will be the first Christmas Eve with them as an adult. I was hoping we would have a white Christmas. Most of our snow melted and it looked as if it wouldn’t happen. This morning I awoke to this.

It looks like temperatures will stay low for the next few days.  We also will have a good sized group here for Christmas day. I’m spending most of today figuring out the logistics of menu and where to put things.

Last week as were driving onto the base, we saw these little snowmen perched on the wall by the guard area.

Ministry here is going well.  We stay plenty busy. Sunday at Velocity, when I expected numbers to be down because some of our folks had already begun their Christmas break, the numbers were up. We also have a good sized group coming on Friday nights to our study/meal/get together. We are very grateful.

I have the honor of working with two lovely ladies on the praise and worship team at PWOC. Sharlene and Stephanie are a joy to work with.

Pictured with us is Sharlene’s daughter, Meleeya. She also loves to sing and has sung with us before at PWOC.

Merry Christmas!

 

Snow and the “Living Christmas Tree”

As I’m typing this, the temperature outside is in the single digits. It is COLD! We had snow yesterday. Ed took this shot out our back window.

This past Friday Ed and I went with 8 folks from our “Truth Project” group to see the “Living Christmas Tree” in Nampa.  We had a wonderful time. The tree in the middle of the stage lights up many different ways. The technical staff there definitely deserved a standing ovation.

Chris and Tony are the “Cool LTs”

We had a great view from the balcony.

A picture of our group from behind.

Very beautiful!

Afterward, we enjoyed some food at Denny’s in Boise. We are so thankful for our group here. We laugh so much. We also encourage each other in the true reason for the season, Jesus.

It took many shots to finally get this pose.  They couldn’t stop laughing.

Ed told them to watch the pros do it (below).

Merry Christmas everyone!

A Very Nice Visit

Last month on my flight to Honolulu from Seattle, a couple from Minnesota sat next to me.  It turns out we had so much in common.  It was a real treat to get to know them.  They love God and are passionate about serving Him. They told me that they were thinking about moving to a place in Oregon called….Roseburg. I told them I had lived in Roseburg and Ed and I both have relatives there and a wonderful church.  Yesterday, they were driving in their RV through this area on their way to Roseburg. They stopped here for a short visit.  They had visited Roseburg one summer and loved it.  Before they decide if they want to live there permanently, they want to experience winter there.  They plan to go to our church there and hopefully get involved in prison ministry as that is their passion. So, Connie and CD, I hope you have a great experience there in Roseburg!

Thanksgiving and Other November Happenings

We have much to be thankful for this month.  We have wonderful team mates here and a great group of airmen and families to work with.  On Veteran’s Day we went with a few of our young adults to the Bruneau Sand Dunes.

Ed enjoyed walking along the crest of the dunes.

It is always fun running down the dunes. We are hoping to figure out a sledding system next time. After we hiked the dunes and perused the gift shop we played games at our house.

A local radio station interviewed us for their Veteran’s Day tribute.  It was a lot of fun.

Here in Idaho we have lots of sagebrush and therefore lots of tumbleweeds.  I have however, never seen so many as this season. Below is a picture of sagebrush pile up at the front gate.

I have a video  on face book of driving through the tumbleweeds that is pretty amazing.

Thanksgiving this year was very wonderful.  We are so grateful to all the folks involved in building our extra room here.   We would not have had enough room for all who came. May God bless you all. You know who you are.

We did it potluck style this year.  Everyone who signed up to bring food brought so much that I didn’t have space for it all.  My next project will have to be to remodel the kitchen….

There was lots of food and lots of laughter.

We had everyone take an ornament, say what they are thankful for this year and put that ornament on our tree. Beth was thankful to have a place to go to for Thanksgiving.  This is the first time she has not been “home” for Thanksgiving.

We played team Pictionary.  I stood in the middle of the house and gave each team their first word.  When a player would guess the word, that player had to run back to their team with the next word. 

We had so many desserts that I invited the gang to come over a few days later for games and to finish off the desserts.

We also sang the “Twelve Days of Christmas” with motions led by Ed.

The day after Thanksgiving, the gang attended a bonfire in Grandview.  I heard several say that that was “awesome”!

We thank God for giving us the honor of ministering to and with these wonderful people.

Happenings in Mt. Home while I was gone

While I was enjoying the warmth of Hawaii, Ed was plugging away with ministry here. Ed got to take 17 men from the base to the Iron Sharpens Iron conference in Boise.

Our guys had matching shirts and got to sit right up front. The conference organizers were so impressed with the Mt. Home group, they were awarded a trophy.

Chaplain Anderson wanted to be there but he was in a Boise hospital recovering from major surgery. Many of the guys crowded into his hospital room.

Chaplain Anderson is the one holding the trophy.

The young adult ministry (Velocity) had a costume party the last Friday of October. The group decided to go bowling and here is what some of them looked like going in.

We are thankful God gave us such a fun group.

Aloha!

From October 21st to November 4, I got to enjoy being with Julie and Jesse in their new home in Hawaii. Unbeknownst to me, Ed had been saving money for a travel fund for me. Thanks Ed!

Julie is 5 months pregnant. It just so happens that I got to be with them when they had an ultrasound.

Here is my grandson’s foot.  That foot kept getting in the way making it hard to get good ultrasounds of other baby features.

I then got to attend the Pacific PWOC conference with Julie in Waikiki at the Hyatt. It was great getting reacquainted with ladies I knew at other places and meeting new friends.

Here we are at the Hyatt wearing our Mt. Home AFB PWOC t-shirts. Next, I’m with Michelle Crump. She and I were on the board together at Ft. Lewis. She and husband, Skip have blessed us so many times. This time, they let me borrow their car while on the island.

This is the view from our room on the 33rd floor.

 

 

I also got to attend the regular Hickam PWOC which meets at the Chapel Center about a block from Julie’s pad. Below is: Julie, me, Lori Klein (we were with her at Ft. Lewis) and Jewlee Knapp (who is actually from Boise).

After PWOC, Stacy Cassidy picked us up and we went to lunch with the other Cadence ladies (Connie Cady and Char Hauser) on the island. It was great fellowship.

 

What a treat to be able to attend a Friday night meal and Bible study at the Cassidy’s hospitality house. I’m pictured below with Stacy Cassidy who is due to deliver her third child around Christmastime.

Julie, Jesse and Jeenou came along. It was a great time with great teaching.

Another highlight of the trip was to spend most of Sunday with the Mike Klein family. Chaplain Mike knows all about water sports there. He took us out on kayaks and showed Jesse how to snorkel. Jesse is hooked and went and bought his own snorkeling equipment. Jesse is pictured below with their daughter Azelyn.

Mike poses above and Lori poses below.

I love spending time walking through the warm water looking for treasures.  Lori and I searched for sea glass for Julie’s collection. We found other treasures as well. Sometimes, the waves knocked me down.  I’m pictured below on the left.

Below, Mike and Jesse examine a sea urchin.

I wore a nice, modest swim top and matching board shorts as my swim suit. It was comfortable. I like the laid back fashions there. I never thought I would be comfortable wearing a swim suit out in public.

The sunsets sure are gorgeous in Hawaii.

Another huge highlight for me was visiting the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. Julie was sick, so I went by myself. First you view a movie, and then you get on a boat to get out to the memorial. Here is a view from the boat.

While at the memorial, there was a great commotion. The admiral in charge of the whole Pacific Command and the first or second highest (I’ve been told both) Chinese military commander (and their entourages) arrived for a tour. You can see them in the picture below. The Chinese commander had just met with President Obama.

This was a very BIG deal.  The bag below caught my eye. It says “Chinese People’s Liberation Army”.

This wall below lists the names of those who died there. It was very moving.

It was very strange being surrounded by Japanese tourists whose forefathers had taken part in this slaughter on our forefathers. I talked with a Viet Nam veteran on the way back and he told me he was not bothered by the Japanese people there. He was very bothered by the Chinese there who were his enemy in Viet Nam. After the military contingent left, most of the people from our boat lined up to get back. We weren’t leaving for awhile, so I had my picture taken with nobody else in the background.

Here below, the last bits of sunshine go down on the horizon on my last full day in Hawaii.

 

I will miss that girl so much! I hope to go back in February when the baby is due. Aloha.