The greatest news of 2008 – soon to be 2009 - is that with all the changes in our society, economy, presidential change, deteriorating culture – you name it, there’s change – but not with God. He’s the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. He loves us and that will never change. He’ll always be waiting for us to come to His outstretched arms and embrace His love. There’s always forgiveness waiting for us from Him. And He will never turn us away. That is the best news ever and I pray this Christmas has you pondering His great love and grace. It is the hallmark of our lives.
This year we’re about to
say goodbye to is no different than others – we have been incredibly blessed by God’s presence, His faithfulness and His love. One of the things we are most thankful for is retirement!! Yeah! Retirement!We love it and have adjusted to it so well. Our year 
has been so busy even with retirement. We’ve gotten really well planted in our church in Surprise, have made some wonderful new friends there, gotten involved in our community AND traveled.We took another trip to Israel with our church from California and it was incredible all over again. We were able to visit a few different places from our 2004 trip a
nd are still amazed at the fulfilled prophecy just alone in the way “the country has blossomed forth.” It’s a very beautiful and luscious country. We also flew to Rome with my cousin, Cheryl and her hubby, Norm. From there we boarded the Galaxy (Celebrity Cruises) and cruised to all the Greek isles and Turkey. At every port, we went on an excursion. One of the exc
ursions took us to Lindos on the Isle of Rhodes. We learned from our tour guide that to this day, Rhodes is 80 percent Orthodox Christian – all because of Saint Paul.When he journeyed to Lindos, the people were worshipping all kinds of gods: the Goddess Athena, Helios (the Sun god), as well as the unknown god. He told the Greeks that he knew who the unknown god was and
He introduced them to Jesus
Christ. Rhodes declared itself a Christian country and has remained so to this day. It was a very moving experience to learn this. This whole trip was amazing. We saw tons of archaeological sites:Pomp
eii, Corinth, Ephesus, the Coliseum, Sistine Chapel, Pantheon, a beautiful castle out in the countryside of Rome, Delos (off the isle of Mykonos), Temple of Venus, Palatine Hill, Catacombs, Stadium of Domitian, Circus Maximus, Colossus of Nero, Th
e Arch of Titus, The Arch of Constantine, The Forum of Caesar, Fountain de Trevi (famous in the movie, Three Coins in the Fountain).The Acropolis in Athens, The Temple of Athena Nike, The Parthenon - or my goodness, so much more. It was a fantastic trip; so much history!!
Our families are all doing well and healthy for the most part. Harry’s parents are 89 (going on 90 in May 09) and 87 and CC’s parents are 85 and 83. Both parents have had health issues this year, but are on the slow mend, for which we are grateful. We’ll be spending Christmas in California with the Adams family this year, so we’ll get to see lots of CC’s relatives.
We had all of our children and grandchildren here for Thanksgiving. What a blast!! We have so much fun together. Our grandchildren are now: 11, 9, 6, 5, 2 ½, and 18 months. It was a joy to watch them play together: the two younger boys played in the rocks in our backyard; 
the two girls in the middle played mostly in the house with legos, plastic tinker toys, and had tea parties and the older boys rode our bikes on the walking trail behind our house and around the neighborhood. Everyone was happy and all we had to do was re-rake the rocks when they left ☺ The day after Thanksgiving, we had Christmas together. We have a beautiful family and sure do know it! Our kids have wonderful spouses and everyone gets along so well. As you can imagine, we laughed a lot too!
CC keeps busy with her stamping. She now hosts a group of stampers in our community. They make greeting cards for the servicemen and women to use and send back home. This past year they’ve sent 1,000 handmade cards to Iraq for different occasions: Birthday, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, July 4th (just for them) and Christmas. She’s also goes to a women’s Bible study and is involved in the Women’s Ministry. Harry spends time working on our new travel business - YTB. He’s studying business marketing and learning what makes home businesses successful. He learned how to golf too and has gone out a couple of times with friends. As a couple we have joined the prayer team at our church, making ourselves available to pray with people following the service. This has been a great blessing for us to do together.
We wish you all a Merry Christmas and may you rejoice with us as we remember that heaven’s Son came to bring hope to everyone and the glory of the Savior came to share God’s love. These are the greatest of all gifts and they’re free. It is our prayer that each of you will recognize your need for God’s love and accept these gifts--they’re priceless and last for eternity.
