Reflecting . . .

Well, in my last post, I was looking forward to the week before Christmas and enjoying the days leading up to Christmas. That bubble got burst! I got some kind of head/throat malady that I am just now getting over. Uff-dah! I am really thankful I was a little ahead in my work, for I really needed it! Everything got done, all the services went well, but my nice, few, peaceful days will have to wait until next year!

But it was a very nice Christmas anyway. Having the whole family home and together was a blessing. My older daughter had her wisdom teeth taken out the week before Christmas, and so we were invalids together. :-)  Sadly, my father didn't really "get" Christmas this year. His sense of time is gone and he didn't realize it was Christmas. We had a couple of gifts for him, but he only opened one. That's okay, of course. Just a bit sad for us. He's slipping away. He still knows us. We still have good visits with him (most of the time). He'll be 95 this year! What a blessing to have this extra time with him.

His real Christmas gift this year was my children playing Christmas hymns on violin for him. We sat around on Christmas afternoon singing all the hymns he knew so well. He really liked that! Here's a picture of my two daughters playing for him . . .

Even my son played for him! He hadn't picked up a violin since he went off to college four years ago, but it came back to him pretty quickly. He did well! (No picture, though.)

Peasant family Christmas picture.

My sister was also able to come down from Connecticut and spend some time with us after Christmas. Like after Thanksgiving, we went to another Escape Room for a little fun. We went to a different place this time. It was quite different, we had less time, and this time, we did not get it done in the allotted time. We did pretty well, just not good enough. I think that given a little more time we would have gotten more of it figured out, but there was one thing at the end that just didn't seem fair to me that I don't know if we would have gotten or not. But anyway, we had fun.

I am also most grateful that in early December I had been contacted by Rev. Robert Rahn of the Lutheran Heritage Foundation to see if we would be interested in having him at our congregation the Sunday after Christmas. He would lead Bible class and preach and tell the story of the LHF and the work they are doing around the world to spread good Lutheran theology. Given my sickness and the fact that I was still recuperating after Christmas, what a help that was! And his presentations were well received by the congregation. A big thanks to him!

Now, time to ramp back up and get things going for 2019 . . .  :-)