Isaacsons, Youngs, Blacks (welfare), Alma Umberg, Wallaces (recently arrived but already cooking up a storm), me |
Lunch in the Isaacsons apartment after church.
Yummy food! Good cooks! We can get most ingredients for familiar food. I still need to learn to cook Chilean dishes in my last 6 months.
And this wonderful Nunez family (below) just moved into our ward after 3 years serving as mission presidents in Argentina. They gave me a delicious Christmas cake.
There is a nativity in front of U Chile |
Interesting tree encouraging people to donate used books. |
The Providencia city hall on a warm December Sunday afternoon and evening. The lights change color and the tree is now lit, after a big lighting ceremony.
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But there is lots of greenery on the street with lights wrapped around the tree trunks, and flowering bougainvillea in a beautiful yard in the neighborhood. During the day it is very warm/hot, but very pleasant in the evening and light until about 9 PM.
Meanwhile....and halfway across the world in England, my daughter Anne and husband Neil just decorated a gorgeous tree in their beautiful 17th century home in the Cotswolds, where they married in July. They will join all my other kids and grand kids in Utah for Christmas. I will be with them in spirit.
In California, friends on my street gather at our monthly meeting to celebrate friendship. We always discuss favorite books, too.
And my friends (Nicholas Welch having recently completed his mission in Toronto, Canada, now at Stanford University, where his dad Jim is bishop of the student ward) are skiing at spectacular Lake Tahoe. They said no one was there...all getting ready for Christmas, I guess!
And in Utah my grand-daughter Phoebe is enjoying her first Christmas in the arms of my daughter Julie, while her sisters and a cousin (in the center) dance the "Nutcracker" ballet they just saw.
I agree with everything you said about gifts and changing the context of Christmas!!!
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