Merry Christmas to All!

Merry Christmas to all our family, dear friends and blog pals!  May you have a wonderful blessed day filled with love and joy contemplating the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and His unspeakably glorious blessings to us all: His love, His example, His Atoning sacrifice for us all bringing resurrection to each of us and eternal life with Him if we choose it.

This year we have sent out fewer cards than before.  It has been such a lovely time making the cards, envelopes, and the letter.  Dear One wrote the letter this year and I edited it.  The cards were all made using frisket to mask out the star then Gelli printing the actual artwork.  It was so much fun to make and such a joy to think about each person who would receive the card.  I hope you know that I think of you as I write these blog posts.  I miss family and friends so much, especially now that we are really far away from you all.  Never fear, we are making wonderful friends here but will never forget (as far as never forgetting goes as we age...!) you who have been our "golden" friends for so many years.

Here is the last of the prints:

Each of the prints is unique.  Some are more attractive than others but each one made with love.

Below is the letter we included with the few cards we mailed.  The colored text is my additional commentary.

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Hello from Sumter, South Carolina!  Christmas 2019

•    In February, we got permission to fly to Utah for the weekend wedding of our oldest grand-daughter, Grace, on a cold, windy day at the Brigham City Temple.  Janus graciously provided our airfare from Portland OR to Salt Lake City UT and back.   It was so wonderful to be there with family and friends for this glorious occasion.  Amazingly, the flight from Portland to Salt Lake City took about the same amount of time it took us to ride the train from the airport to the closest train station to our apartment!  A sweet sister, Ashley, in our ward got permission for us to park in her parking lot for that weekend.

Last day on the mission at the Rose Festival in the Lloyd Center.

•   In April, Jonathan and Alissa Crossett decided to buy our family home, thus making us homeless for the first time in our marriage.  Also, Elder and Sister Thorup arrived to begin training to replace us in the Mission office.  It was so great to know that Crossetts would continue to love that property...especially the brook and swamp on the opposite sides of the acreage. It was also a most wonderful experience to train this marvelous couple who would spend the next two years assisting our mission president with the work.  We loved them immediately, as we had loved those who had gone before.

•    In May, we began shipping boxes to Vermont (things that would not fit in the car).  (It turned out we had been on a high acquisition project for two years!  We sent home LOTS of boxes.  A gigantic number. Even after giving away a lot of good stuff plus leaving things I thought were useful in the mission apartment for the next missionary couple.  Bob was a bit put out.  Fortunately he loves me and recovered from the pain of paying the shipping bills.) Also, we traded in our Camry for a new hybrid Camry.

•    On June 1st, we had a mission wide conference at which Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf presided.  Previously, we had Elder Quentin L. Cook visit.  We had other members of the Seventy visit, too.  We had the pleasure of having an interview with Elder Pearson.  These Brethren were such an inspiration to all of us missionaries.  We loved each visit and cherished meeting them and learning at their feet.

•   We were able to get to Utah in time for our daughter, Megan’s, wedding to Fritz Coleman.  We helped on setting up the reception.  We had a reunion gathering while in Utah with all the nearby senior missionaries we had known while in Portland.  It was such a joy to again be with family plus the added joy of communion with our dear missionary friends.  Times never to be forgotten.

•    We finished up our work in the Mission Office on the 6th of June and began our long drive east.  We stopped at Mitsi Corwin Jones'  home in Wyoming as we drove to Vermont. Mitsi had been so kind as to prepare a wonderful meal for us that we took with us as we still had hours to drive before stopping for the night. The picture included in this card was taken at the Rose Festival (by Sister Thorup) at the Lloyd Center the day before we left Portland. It was so sweet to be there, and to share that day with our dear new friends.

•    On June 17th, we began the long drive across the country (from Utah after the wedding preparations, celebration, and lovely days with our grandson so his mom and dad could get away for a few days together) with our first destination being Sumter, South Carolina, in hopes of finding a home there.  Bob had spent months looking for a new home for us, a state where retirees would be welcomed and a temple and ward meetinghouse would be nearby.

•   We spent two days looking at houses in the Sumter area with our realtor, Reggie Sumter. We wanted a home near the chapel and near the Temple.  It turned out that the house we chose was about 2 minutes via car and less than half an hour for a slow walker from our new house. It also turned out to be a "smart green house".  Totally new experience!

•   We spent the month of July working on the boxes we had shipped home as well as the furniture and things that we were going to ship to Sumter, SC via U-Pack semi-trailer.  We loaded 15 feet.  We spent as much time with family and friends and farewells as we could squeeze in.  There were so many people we could not work into that rugged schedule, to our tremendous chagrin.  Please note the invitation at the bottom of this letter!!!  Also, we culled even more of our stuff.  So difficult to part with treasures, and not-so-treasures, but stuff we had loved for years. We think we know a tiny bit how the pioneers in our Church felt when they said goodbye to family and friends as they began their trek across the ocean and across the country to join with other church members in the West.  So wrenching.

•   We closed on our new home in Sumter on August 2nd with our belongings still in transit from VT.  After about two months the living room furniture we had ordered finally arrived.  It was so wonderful to be able to invite people to come over and have a place for them to sit other than the hard dining room chairs!  Before the truck arrived with our other furniture we only had the stairs to sit on or the car in the garage to sit on!  Fun times. Well, memorable times, anyway!

•   We were called to be Young Single Adult Advisors in the Sumter Ward after speaking in Church a week earlier at the end of September.  We have 150 young singles to minister to.  Well, we have to find them first.  So far we have found two of them who are now married!  Good news for them.  It has been fun to make birthday cards for each of them in an effort to get into contact with them.  So far only four cards have been returned with bad addresses.  We now have a young woman as representative.  She is a go-getter and a real help.  Together we may be able to reach out to some wonderful young people.

•   We were called to be Ordinance Workers at the Columbia SC Temple and started training in Nov.  It is such a joy to be in the temple again on a regular basis.  The temple is less than an hour's drive away.  Glorious.

•   Pattie’s sister, Jessie, and her husband, Johnny, came to visit us for the weekend in October.  They kindly brought an electric piano to furnish our home.  We had the best time visiting though it was only a few hours.

•   Bob’s sister, Ginny, and her friend, Doug, came to Sumter to visit us in our new home and do some sight seeing.  We went to South Carolina Zoo, and Swan Lake to see lots of swans and the Sumter museum where they were having a Pow Wow.  It was the first time we had stopped "moving in" to do any looking around the area.  It was fun to do it with Ginny and Doug. We hope to continue checking out the area as time goes by.  We are mostly well situated in the house by now.  Well, having said that,  my workroom is still somewhat of a disaster.  There are still about a dozen boxes in the the garage that need to find new homes...mostly in the workroom.  Also there are rows of books on the floor in our bedroom.  We are hoping to purchase a bookcase each month starting in January until we have the books all in their new home.  At least, that is my hope!  We keep going back and forth between getting rubber wood bookcases on Amazon that we have to put together ourselves or going to the furniture store where we bought the rest of our furniture and paying a huge bill.  Our tv table project makes me agree with Bob that the furniture store might be the better idea, BUT the extra $200 or $300 makes me NOT want to go that route!  However, I got a "Christmas present" for Bob that entailed putting together a project.  It went together pretty well, even though I didn't have the directions until it was halfway together and I realized it was not going to work as put together.  In the middle of the night recently I was awake so I started again and had it done within 30 minutes!  Nice.

•   We went to New Bern, North Carolina for Thanksgiving and helped Pattie’s sister, Jessie, and her husband, Johnny, with making pies for the Marines at Cherry Point Base who didn’t get to go home for the holiday.  It was a wonderful time and we felt very useful as well as having a good time.  Sharing that time together was a treasured experience.

                        We welcome letters or packages at 1740 Trevino Dr., Sumter, SC 29154. 

                                        If you are in the area, we have a guest room waiting.

                        MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM BOB AND PATTIE CROSSETT