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Not so hectic today but what do I need to do otherwise?  I mean, really?

Mom got what she wanted from Santa this year, a new iPad to replace the aging one she uses all the time.  We were able to use it most of the day in talking to the family.  I got a bag to carry my tools around at the temple.  Much needed.

Highlight of the day was when Elder Kevin called at 11 AM, an hour early, and spoke with us for any hour.  He is having a great mission and doing well.  He is coming up on 5 weeks in his current assignment and will probably be reassigned soon as they don't keep them in one place for all that long.  He has been a DL for several weeks.  Not sure that will continue but he has no idea if it will or not.  It was a real treat to see him and hear his voice.  We talked a bit about what he wants to do when he comes home.  He has some ideas and BYUI seems to be in his plans, for now.  As the time draws closer, we'll see how that turns out.  We also got to speak to family throughout the day.  Lots of fun and much appreciated.  Still some left to talk to.

Nearly 200 site and Temple missionaries plus others for dinner for Christmas.   Our table in front had the Gammel's, Ludwig's, and the Massey's.  We had lots to talk about.  Nice people.  New missionaries, for the most part.  Will be here till  next fall.

We're home now and just relaxing.  We start back to work again tomorrow so things will sort of get back to some semblance of normal.  But, next week is New Years so it won't be all that normal.  Not until the following week anyway.  

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Merry Christmas!  Here are our activities for the last couple of days:

On the 21st we had a cookie exchange over at one of the other missionary's apartments.  We met there, talked for a while about things that missionaries talk about then swapped cookies.  One of them was a dark chocolate base cookie with a cherry in the center then covered with a dash of chocolate fudge on top.  Pretty tasty!

Cookies!

The ladies that made the cookies.  Well, except I made our cookies.  They came out weird too.  Peanut butter but the little fork marks disappeared when they cooked.  Never had that happen before and I've made a lot of peanut butter cookies.  Ate a lot of them too!

Splitting up the goodies.  We still have a big bag of cookies left over.  I can only eat so many goodies.  

The activities for Christmas Eve started at 10 AM with us helping the Site Missionaries setting up for Christmas Dinner in the Stake Center with chairs, tables and decorations but when we got there everything was already set up.  We set up a few things and they let us go.  Well, OK, but Sister Simons was going over to the Arrival Center to set up for the soup bar/hot chocolate bar that was happening later that night between caroling and the other activities.  So, we hoofed it over there.  

Arlene and I stopped by the temple and conned the security guard to open up the Arrival Center so we could get in there.  We had several other couples come and help.  

After all that, there was a "Live Nativity" that we got tickets to out on Highway 61 on the way to Burlington, just outside of Fort Madison.  It was a park and ride to an old barn and some other things going on.  

We loaded up into the barn with 150 of us, similar to sardines, eagerly awaiting the start of what turned out to be a Christmas Eve church service.  A protestant one after all.  The people in front and next to us are all missionaries we are serving with.  We're sitting on hay bails.

More of the inside of the barn.  It's a big barn.

The barn was built in 1857 and mostly from hand hewn timbers made from whole trees.  Here are some good examples of the kind of timbers used.  Anyone got a match? 

Loading in the wagons to go back to the parking lot.

The barn was filled with loose hay that was driven up through these doors and dumped in the middle of the barn.  They backed the wagons, with the hay, up this ramp on the right into the barn during harvest time.  Here we are waiting for the wagon to take us back to the parking area.

Finally made it on a wagon to go back.  Brrrr...a bit chilly.  Note ramp in back.

From the back of the wagon, the road back to the parking area was a bit rutted.  We were sliding around a lot as the horses pulled us through the muck.  The driver said there was quite a lot of road base under the mud.  I have my doubts...

The wagons.

A better shot of the barn from the other side with a little sun on it.  

The next activity was the soup/rolls/hot chocolate at the Arrival Center back in Nauvoo.

Sister Simons welcoming us and giving us some directions.

The engineers table with Bro/Sis Hendricks and the Chapmans.  Lots of different kinds of soups and homemade rolls.

At 6 PM we were supposed to head on over to the front of the temple for "spontaneous" Christmas Caroling.  However, the temple gates were closed.  One of the sisters asked me, as an engineer, if I had a key to get in.  Well, no, but security wtas here.  Let me go talk to him.  So, I managed to get the gates opened and all these people, members and non-members, flowed onto the temple steps and sang a bunch of Christmas steps.  

Bro McDonald warmed us up by playing his bagpipes.  We all enjoyed hearing him play.  We also know now that bagpipes do not like the cold.  It took him a while to get them warmed up.  Ever heard a bagpipe that isn't liking cold weather?  It's not quite as mournful as you'd expect.

People climbing up the steps and singing their hearts out.  Pretty interesting.

A little light on the subject.

This is a shot from the back, where the wind wasn't blowing quite so hard. 

We then headed back to the Arrival Center for more Christmas Carols and hot chocolate, goodies ('cause we need more sugar).

After that we cleaned up and left for our own activities.

We decided to head out and get some of our own Christmas spirit.  The temple manger scene was close by so I got a picture of it with the temple as the backdrop.

Next we headed over to Keokuk (12 miles away) and drove through the local Christmas display (City of Christmas) they do there in Rand Park.  You can view it at:  http://www.cityofchristmas.org/Tour.html  Enjoy!  It's quite the display!

Just millions of lights to look at.  Took us forever to get through it.  Pretty interesting to see, also.  Yes, you drive through most of these.  Go to the site above to get a better idea of what they do here.  

There's more but I'm going to continue on another page for the day.  This wraps up Christmas Eve.

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Christmas week.  I hope everything is going your way for you and your families.  We stopped by one of the sites we hadn't stopped at yet.  It is the quarry where they got all of the original stone from for the original Nauvoo temple.  Since the river was dammed up in 1912, the river is now considerably wider so the quarry in now flooded.  It's not quite what it looked like back then but, at least, it is something to stare into.

The quarry site overlook.  It was a very windy day, as most days recently.  Arlene is heading up to the lookout.  A bit chilly, also.

Scene from the overlook.  You can see where the stone was taken from on the sides.  The rest of it is underwater.  During the end of the summer the water level was way down and this is where the temple gets it's water from for watering the temple lawn.  We actually ran out of water in September/October.  Now we have plenty of water as we are at flood stage with all of the heavy rains we're getting.  Go figure...

So, most mornings I go for a jog just to keep up appearances as to some level of fitness.  It was 18 the other morning so this is my morning attire.  Works OK.  Can't wait till it gets down to 0 or less.  Hafta rethink this morning jog thing, I guess....

We had a Christmas program at the Stake Center last night.  They removed the first three rows of seats in the chapel and went whole hog to bring in the community with lots of non-member involvement.  Had a children's choir, a small orchestra, a conductor and lots of other things going on.  A lot of our missionaries participated.  We were encouraged to applauded and take pictures.  I took some video but most of it is way to big to upload here so you' need to be satisfied with this one picture I managed to hang onto.

It was well attended and we got to meet a couple of our new missionaries at the temple that just arrived.  They will be here for a year.  They had that look of being lost so we were trying to clue them in a bit.  They are excited to get started Tuesday.

We're ready for Christmas

I did a computer job for a neighbor and he made this up for me.  It's all hand made from nails then welded together.  Pretty nifty.

The tree is up, awaiting the arrival of Saint Nic but, alas, no chimney for him to come down.  I'm figuring he'll hafta use the back door.  Heck, the vent to the stove doesn't even go outside.  Maybe I'll get that Tesla I've been thinking about?  Probably not...got all the stuff from discards leftover from the missionaries that bailed back in November and are all gone now.  Just like we'll do when we leave late next year.  Less than a year to go.  Halfway through our mission at this point.

Hope you have a wonderful Christmas.  Best wishes to all your families.  More picts to follow as we have a few activities over the next few days and we get to speak to Elder Kevin on Christmas day.  Looking forward to that.  He has less than a year left on his mission.  Only Tues/Wed/Sat to work this week.  Kinda seems like a vacation!  Same goes for next week!  Yippee!

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Just some catching up...

We had a smaller than usual gathering for Thanksgiving as a few of us were gone.

Before the mayhem, in the arrival Center.

President McArthur speaking to us.  I didn't bother taking pictures while we are eating as you've seen enough of those pictures.  He spoke for several minutes wishing us well as we're away from our families.  A couple of missionaries had their families visiting so there were a few kids there just to remind us of what it's like to have families there.

We've been visited by Cardinals recently.  They are really hard to get shots of as they don't stay in one place longer than a few seconds before they flit off in search of food.  I just lucked out on this one.

Kind of hiding.  There are a group of four with their females.

They had the annual tree lighting ceremony last week but we were working at the temple that night.   We stopped by today and took a couple of shots.

A sister missionary working in the visitor's center obliged us with the obligatory visitor photo.

They have a manger scene also.

Of course, we had to be in that one, also.

What trip to the visitor's center would be complete without a picture standing next to Joseph Smith?

So, today the weather is around 60 degrees but with the winds at 30 MPH till this evening.  We're serving as ordinance workers tonight so the day is really short, only 5 hours.  Almost a vacation!  We hope that all of your Christmas plans are coming along and that you are getting ready for the great day in a couple of weeks.  We will be missing you all but thinking of you just the same.  For what it's worth, we are at about the halfway mark of our mission.  Crazy, huh?