The First Christmas Program

Another cold 16 degree morning. I had a big stack of towels to take to the barn so drove my car over to drop those off at the meeting time only to get a text that Joan wasn't walking and Ruth was running late. I called Ruth then to let her know I only had a short time to walk as I needed to stop at Sam's before Berean this morning. We decided to cancel. Mark was surprised when I met him just heading out to tell him breakfast would be ready in a few minutes. By 8:00 am I was on my way to Sam's club. I picked up a French silk pie for our treat then headed to the office. We were really busy since we didn't meet last week. We had 25 Bible requests and quite a stack of lessons to process. Vonnie opened a nice thank you letter. The inmate had carefully decorated the back of the letter. 

We were a little short handed in the reading of the letters as both Kathy and Marvin couldn't come. Leila got it all done by herself while Skip and I entered.

Below Sharon is getting the address labels on the envelopes then putting 2 envelopes on each study. Vonnie and Shirley take them into the other room and fill one envelope with the next set of studies.

Below Sharon, Leila and Bruce are preparing the Bibles for mailing. 

Each inmate that requests a Bible not only gets the Bible but also the first set of lessons. 

Joan arrived to pick up studies for grading and also brought me a gift for the barn. 

An adorable children's book about a foal. 

Once the Bibles and studies were loaded into the car we enjoyed that French silk pie.

There was just one piece left after everyone was done so when I dropped off the mail at the Hanna City post office I gave that last piece to Kathy the postmistress. It was a good morning's work. Mark had a nice fire going in the wood burner and I was glad to rest in front of that before our next adventure. We took a quick trip just past the water tower before I realized I had forgotten something. Thankfully we were early enough that we had time to run home. The sun was just setting and this was probably around 4:25 pm. The picture below is of Barry and Paula's farm.

Paula moved a few years ago to Florida and I've met our new neighbors but don't remember their names so of course the farm is still called Paula and Barry's place. We needed to be at a park at the bottom of Grand View Drive to meet David so we could take Israel and Elisabet with us to Abe Judah's Christmas program at the Cerf center Eureka college. This is the first Christmas program of the year. This place is always packed, below is just some of the audience.

Thankfully Goodfield Elementary was the first group of the night. Below is Abe's class.

After the program we went to a pizza place called WendyPuff. There were 12 of us eating and ordered lots of pizzas.

Below are Jace and Abe with their other grandpa.

From there we drove to Dave and Stephanie's house. Israel wanted to show me how he could program the lights on the tree outside but it was just too cold to stand outside to watch. Plus it was PAST their bedtime.

Rizzy was so glad to see us. It was hard to get a picture of her in her new bed.

We had just gotten the kids to bed and sat down when we heard the garage door opening. We didn't stay to talk as it was after our bedtime. Well it really wasn't but by the time the drive home was over we were both ready for bed.