I’ll be brief because you all have a good deal going on today, but welcome to day 25, the last day of this year’s Christmas blitz.

I’ll tell you about the last couple of days, as they are our most recent Christmas memories…

Is this first Christmas Memory post you’re seeing?
You can get caught up by starting back on day 1 to understand this year’s theme

Christmas 2023

The past couple days have been lovely. On Friday, we had a visit from some of our oldest friends in France. We attended Camille & Sylvain’s wedding only a few months after our arrival in 2015 and our friendship dates back to 2003-2004 when we were colleagues at the University of New Brunswick.

Yesterday, we stayed at church for a light lunch after service, had a nap in the afternoon and hosted a young couple for supper… the traditional Christmas Eve Fish Chowder . They have only been living in the city for a couple of months and Dominic met him in town a couple of weeks ago.

We watched an episode of The Chosen (Messengers) which tells the story of the nativity, put the finishing touches on last minute wrapping (done up quickly) and headed to bed at quite a reasonable time.

If I’m honest, there are things I still (& will likely always) miss about Christmas time in Canada… not the least of which is the way God periodically showed off his handiwork in nature. This 2013 ice storm, combined with colours in the sky and the golden leaves of the beech tree that was in our yard attests to the beauty of wintertime in Canada, while today was 12˚C (54˚F) here today – allowing me to also trim a few of the lavender & flowering sage in the garden

That being said…

God’s handiwork is also being revealed in the lives of people around us…. folks at church that we’ve known for a while and ones that we’ve only just met. That is one upside of living away from the familiar… we get to focus on what the FAMILIAR is doing: God is at work and that’s a good Christmas memory to leave you with today.

Thank you sharing our memories this month
and…