The Sunday after Thanksgiving will be the beginning of the Christmas Season at the Visitors’ Center. However, to get ready twelve Christmas Trees have to be set up, lights working, and decorated. Most of the trees are decorated by various wards or stakes in the area. The four trees by the Christus, however, are decorated by the Visitors’ Center missionaries. Today was “decoration day”!

The tallest tree stands in front of the tall front window. The decorating crew (a dozen people) arrived about nine and spent close to three hours decorating the tree. Now our big problem is to keep the little children from pulling ornaments off of the trees. There’s still a lot more to be done … most trees will be decorated next week. The Young Adult Stake will be putting a huge number of poinsettias around the Center (some of which will “protect” the trees around the Christus).

We’ll have a missionary musical fireside on November 29th and at the end we’ll turn on all of the Christmas lights in the Center. These things are very well attended, so hopefully the weather will cooperate. Every week afterwards will be another fireside on Sunday evening. Our attendance stats should be pretty good for December. We’re already seeing an increase in visitors coming from the mainland taking vacation over Thanksgiving. That trend should continue through end of December.

I’m definitely feeling better. I’ll be visiting with the doctor on Tuesday morning where they’ll take an x-ray to verify that the pneumonia is gone. I’m still quite tired, but not nearly like a week ago.

So, the holidays are upon us. Life is busy in a very good way. This evening Nina and I were visiting with a young lady outside near the fountains. She was quite impressed with the beauty of the Temple grounds and how peaceful the area feels. That’s a sentiment we hear several times a day when we’re at the Center. There is definitely a loving, peaceful feeling around the Temple. We are so very blessed to be involved with the Visitors’ Center!

Life is good … tired … peaceful. Ta ta for now!