Every so often there is a full moon during the night on Christmas Eve into Christmas Day. This year was one of those, although here in Hawaii we don’t see the moon all that often because it’s usually pretty cloudy. The Temple faces true east, which means that the moon goes over the Temple and sets behind the Temple. Even on a cloudless night we usually don’t see a full moon behind the Temple because it’s daylight when a full moon sets. On the other hand, new moons also set behind the Temple, it’s always dark and early evening when they are setting, and I can get a picture (although more than a little bit shaky). The next full moon on Christmas Eve into Christmas Day will be in 2026, for anyone interested.

We came home from shopping last Monday to find a Very Huge Spider on the front wall of the house in just the right position that we had to walk past it to get into the house. I’ve no idea what kind of a spider this was, but it definitely took up some real estate on the wall. It spent much of the afternoon on the wall, then disappeared (hopefully not into the house!). Spiders are, to me, pretty ugly creatures. I’m certain this spider exists if, for no other reason, than to give some other animal (the ferrel chickens?) a tasty snack.

The Visitors’ Center is closed two days of the year … Christmas and Thanksgiving. It is also closed early on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve. We open at noon on New Years Day. To give the missionaries something to do on New Years Eve, all of the missionaries in our Zone will gather at the Visitors’ Center around 7:30pm on New Years Eve to watch a movie. We’re planning to watch “The Cokeville Miracle”, a fairly recent movie. They are all supposed to be safely in their lodging not later than 9:30pm on New Years Eve. Sounds like a good time for me, as well. We’ve been told that fireworks galore will go off all night long on New Years Eve. So, it’s a good thing we don’t open until noon. I’ll need a morning nap, for sure!

Cokeville, Wyoming is just across the border into Wyoming on the way from Soda Springs (where I grew up) to Green River, Wyoming (where my favorite brother lives). It’s a very small town (and getting smaller as the years go by), supported mainly by agriculture and the trucks that go through town from I-80 going to I-15. The school hostage crisis occurred in 1986 and is still quite vivid in my memory. Wikipedia has a good writeup on the whole ordeal. I’m interested to see how it all unfolds on the movie screen versus how it really happened. I do believe it was quite a miracle that, other than the perpetrators, no one was seriously injured.

Christmas was a very nice day. We spent much of the day at the Visitors’ Center with our iPads so the sister missionaries could use Skype to call their families. It was fun to watch them make the connection and actually see their family and friends! Sister missionaries can actually squeal pretty loudly when they’re excited…. The absolute highlight for us came at 1:30pm when we logged into a website (zoom.us) and joined a video conference set up by our daughter Jaelene and were able to talk with six of our children and their families. We were able to chat for about 45 minutes. This was a very special treat for us.

Well, the Christmas trees at the Visitors’ Center all come down this weekend, the background Christmas music gets turned off, replaced by normal Tabernacle Choir music. The special display for “A Savior Is Born“, the new Christmas video, will be put away, and by Monday we’ll be pretty much back to normal. The holiday season will be behind us. However, January will not be mundane … not by a long shot. The current Visitors’ Center Director and his wife, Elder and Sister Priday, will leave on January 15th, being replaced by Elder and Sister Swinton. Then on January 20th, the other senior missionary couple, Elder and Sister Jensen, complete their missionary service and will be replaced by Elder and Sister Andrus from Rexburg. We will seriously miss both the Pridays and the Jensens. They have become good friends and easy people to work with. There is one constant in life: change. January will be a month of change around here for sure!

Meanwhile, Life is very pleasant.

Ta ta for now!