Hi Everybody,
        Well, its Christmas afternoon.  Chris has left.  All went
well.  thank you for praying!!  My Christmas actually began on Friday
evening.  A few of us from church did Christmas caroling at our local
retirement, residential independent living facility. We sang and
handed out little books with meditations on the reason for the
season.  I think that everybody enjoyed it.  Some of those people
don't get much in the way of visitors so, at least it was something.
        Then, our family went caroling with another group for about another
hour, but this time, we were walking through a neighborhood and
singing outside.  We all carried homemade lanterns and sang our
hearts out.  It was a real, old fashioned, New England event.  We had
so much fun!
        Greg picked Chris up after work on Saturday.  Chris was very
pleasant.  We all worked at getting along.  He was polite and
everything.     We thought that Matt was going to have to work last
night and miss the Christmas eve service, but, as a Christmas present
for me, he asked for two hours off and came to the service to
surprise me.  I had my whole family in church last night and this
morning.  I truly felt so blessed.
        We've had our dinner now and Greg took Chris to his room to drop off
his stuff and then took him to Nicky's.  I pray that this was a good
first step toward reconciliation.  Chris told me that he wished that
he had invited Nicky last night to the christmas eve service  after
all.  We had encouraged him to do so, but, oh well.  Maybe next
year!  He also told me, before he left, that he liked being in
church.  He had been nervice about that, I know, but the people
welcomed him well.  I'd like to believe that, in some way, he really meant it.
        For our Christmas eve service we do the triditional lessons and
carols of Christmas.  It's probably the one time of the year that we
get a little high church like, but it is so moving.  We had a lot of
visitors from the community last night and Greg gave a pretty strong
invitation  at the end.  Who knows what seeds were planted.
        Well, enough of my babbling.  Oops, sorry Brad!  I know, that's
supposed to be your trade mark.  I'm just bubbling over with joy and
relief, I guess and I wanted to share with my prayer warriors as soon
as possible.  Thank you so much for adding to my successful
Christmas.  Now I can relax and look forward to a few days of just
taking it easy.  Thank you Lord!
Merry Christmas everyone!
Kathy