Christmas and birthday week

Hopefully you all enjoyed the Christmas holidays with your loved ones. We celebrated our annual Christmas and birthday week,  starting with our daughter Jessica's birthday bowling party in Morden on the 20th. Then it was Garry's birthday on Sunday,  when after church we went to our son and daughter in law's house for potluck appetizers and Eagles football watching.  Yeah, the Eagles beat Dallas for Garry's birthday!

Unfortunately I caught a bad cold over the weekend but was improving by Christmas day.  Garry enjoyed singing with the choir for the Christmas eve program. We enjoyed Christmas day with the whole family as Matthew, Kari and the girls came from Saskatchewan for Christmas day, and yesterday everyone was here again for my birthday.  We even got a photo of all the grandkids where no one's crying or running. 

At noon today, Garry and I are headed west to Salmon Arm for Jack's church service,  Monday we'll start the  return journey and stop to see Matt's new home on the way back and celebrate the new year. Garry leaves for Ukraine on the sixth,  and I'll be babysitting one of our grandkids while his parents are going to Mexico for the week, so it's a fast trip out and back.

Week...update

Sorry for not getting this posted earlier, but google wouldn't let me sign in on my tablet on Friday when I was in Morden. There was a reason I knew the password, I mean it's my account!

Garry's computer, which I'm on now, got a new hard-drive this weekend when he asked Noah to check it out, so I was unable to make a post! We seem to be busy everyday with family or church activities. Garry has been helping the boys with farm work, doing a little visiting, and going to choir practice, since he will be singing in the choir on Christmas eve.

On Wednesday while he was at choir practice I went with Crystal and Audrey to the ladies Christmas meeting in Piney ( our son Matt's former church). I'd been asked to do a ten minute devotional. I'm not sure I made it ten minutes, but my topic was Joy, and how we can get so busy we don't find the joy in Christmas. I talked about the angels' message of Good news of great joy to all.

The idea was to remember that secret to feeling Christmas joy is:
 J- Jesus - putting  Jesus first, not just the baby but the one to walk with everyday
O- Others - putting others ahead of ourselves. I talked about reading football star Gayle Sayers' autobiography   I am Third when I was a teenager.
Y- You - don't forget about taking care of you in the busy time, we all need to refresh ourselves to be able to give. I did hand out little reminder ornaments that I made for the dozen ladies there.

Saturday night was the farm Christmas party and on Sunday afternoon our veterinarian took us to the Jets game because they we playing the team of my youth, the Philadelphia Flyers.  Unfortunately for me, the Flyers lost, but I wasn't the only one there wearing an orange jersey. We had a nice family weekend besides.

In other news, back in Ukraine the transformer is fixed (or new?) Victor paid to get us hooked back up to the grid last week,  but they said the earliest they could come is Wednesday.  He was going to go to their office in Zaporosia today to see if he could hurry that up. Saturday marked three full weeks running the barn on generator.  After the first week, Max changed over from the old Belarus tractor to the New Holland so it would work better.

He's here in Manitoba

Garry did arrive Tuesday evening as scheduled.  We spent a couple days in Winnipeg at the dairy conference before coming home Friday afternoon.  Garry did drive into Steinbach Wednesday evening for choir practice,  he'll be singing Sunday morning,  and on Christmas eve,  too.

We got to see a few of the grandkids at the conference in Winnipeg,  they are growing more every day, it seems.  Yesterday afternoon when we got back to the farm, Garry got to meet two week old  baby Nova.

Back in Ukraine,  they have been milking and running all the power for the barn for two weeks today with the generator.  Max switched from using the oldest Belarus to run the generator after about a week to using the big New Holland tractor.  Most recent update on the transformer is that it needs another thousand dollars in repairs,  hopefully it will be fixed this week. The tractor was going through about 70 dollars in diesel fuel a day, I think Garry said.

Heading back home

In a couple hours it will be morning in Ukraine and Garry will be going into Dnepro to catch the morning train to Kiev.  Then Tuesday morning he'll be on the first plane plane of his day that will have him landing in Winnipeg nine pm our time (early morning in Ukraine).

He had a very busy Saturday,  he got up early to get his English lessons ready for the conversation classes he does in Dnepro (normally he does it earlier in the week, but he was really busy) ,  then feeding the cows, followed by driving to Dnepro,  teaching three hours of classes,  and then driving back to the village and picking up the students to go to the last Just Youth meeting in Zaporosia. He said he fell asleep as soon as he got home.

  Steve,  Jo and the kids are moving back to Canada. Two weekends ago, Garry went to Steve's last floorball game, playing on the team was one of his outreach activities with a group of graduated orphan guys he worked with.  The suitcase Garry is taking home is full of Harder stuff (as was one of mine). It's going to  be strange not going to their apartment for our weekly small group meeting.

Julia (one of the students)  sent me a picture of the band playing. Garry said they had a full room at New Hope church.

I'm waiting for an internet call from Garry before he leaves. Hopefully he didn't stay up too late watching the Eagles lose today's game. I guess he can sleep on the train.