Grandpa and Grandma's Christmas Letter

Merry Christmas to one and all from the beautiful Caribbean.

Our hearts are with you one and all and we hope this is a joyous season with a focus on the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Enjoy the presents and the good food but let us not forget the real reason for the remembrance. We have had some wonderfully good times in various Christmas celebrations. Three weeks ago we had a meeting of all temple employees in the large priesthood room of the temple. Big D spoke followed by Elder Lee, the second counselor of the Area Presidency. The workers then went on a special endowment session (special because this was held on a Monday and the temple was closed) and were later served a lunch in the temple dining room.

Two weeks ago, on a Sunday evening we had a special devotional in one of the local wards for all the temple ordinance workers. There is a wonderful male chorus, made up of young men from the area, some of them temple workers, that sang beautifully. Again Big D spoke briefly, followed by President Daniel Johnson of the 1st Quorum of Seventy who is first counselor in the Area Presidency down here. The chorus was so beautiful we had them cancel the closing congretional song and had them repeat one of their songs, Beautiful Savior. We believe it touched many hearts. At one point during the service it rained so hard that even with the speaker system, we had to stop because you couldn't be heard over the thunderous rainstorm. It lasted about three minutes, then the sun came out again and by the time the service was over the streets were dry.

This past sunday night we attended a fireside at the Mission Home of President Bair, of the West Mission. [President Bair worked with us on the Saturday AM shift before he was called to be mission president. They have about six months left before they go home.] Again, we were were blessed to hear the male chorus sing many more songs then they did on the Sunday night at our devotional. In fact, it was all music. They had wonderful snacks and all had a great time.

Last night we went to another FHE fireside held at the home of President Johnson. We had a delicious bread and soup dinner with assorted goodies and a wonderful program of music and the spoken word about our Savior Jesus Christ. Two of the guests were the inlaws and children of President Johnson. The inlaws are members of the Tabernacle Choir and so you can imagine the music was beautiful.

Today at 5:00 we are hosting a all of the people who live in our building for a Christmas dinner. We are providing the ham and all are contributing, so I guess you could call it a Christmas Potluck. We are going to show last years Tabernacle Choir Christmas presentation. It is the one with Sissel to be shown in the states over PBS. If you remember Sissel is the Norwegian singer whose CD we brought you back from our trip to Norway.

Since we have the early shift tomorrow morning we will not be staying up to late tonight. Interesting: we get to see Sunday night football Monday afternoon as it is rebroadcast on a channel from Mexico.

We are wonderfully busy, very happy and the weather could not be more beautiful, with even cool breezes in the evening...after all it is winter. Mother just finished cutting up a big bowl of pineapple, papaya and melons that will be chilled in the fridge and enjoy for the next few days. We have fresh fruit like this at least once a day. And the biggest, most beautiful avacados you can imagine. We have them in all our salads becuase they are so inexppensive down here. (You can see the adjustments we will have to make in about three years!)

Mother spent a marathon day baking yesterday and then we took bags of cookies to all the temple cleaning staff that were working in the temple yesterday cleaning it so it will be beautiful for Wednesday. And the gardners, too, who keep the grounds so lovely. On hot days Mother likes to take popsicles out to the gardners who are out working in the hot sun. There is a little ice cream shop just off the temple grounds called the BON.

Humorous little side note. When we went to buy the ham for todays festivities we thought we could get it at Price Smart [the Dominican Costco]. The last time we were here they had big frozen hams in with the turkeys, but not this year. We could have bought a quarter of a frozen pig, but that was a little more than we cared to be involved with. Secretarys note: I didn't want to look at a frozen pig in my freezer. We looked at what they called ham but it didn't look familiar so we went to a very large French grocery store called Carrefour. They had a much larger selection of hams but none of the spiral cut frozen ones we had expected to find. Not knowing one ham from the other the people were kind enough to slice off pieces of several different hams for us to taste and try. We finally selected a ham from France which was very tasty. We had them slice it for us and put it in several different packages. As we went to the cashiers line Mother made the comment "I think we just bought some very expensive meat." When we got to the checkout the young lady scanned the packages but as she scanned the last one she looked at us and said a bunch of stuff in Spanish we didn't understand. She then called a supervisor over and she fussed around saying a bunch of things in Spanish we didn't understand. They finally closed the line and sent the people behind us to other checkout stations, until they solved the problem. Then someone went back to the butcher shop and brought the butcher forward. He came out and after much more conversation the problem was solved. It turns out that on the last package of 128,000 pesos! (We could have paid first class passage for the pig to be flown here). We were grateful to the little checkout girl who happened to think that 128,000 pesos was a bit high for any kind of ham. We thanked her profusely.

so here we are babes in the woods wandering around this city doing things whether we know what we are doing or not. Be afraid for us...be very afraid.

Have a wonderfully merry Christmas. We love you and wish we could be with you. May Father in Heavens choicest blessings be with you. Please go to the temple frequently and sit and ponder what you are being taught. It is true.

Love Mom and Dad