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December 16, 2013

Dear Family and Friends
Merry Christmas!! It seems hard to believe that Christmas is so close!  As usual it has been a busy week.
Wow 4 new Senior Missionaries arrived here in Jamaica this week.  They are so welcome and needed, wish we had more.  Below are Sister Wege (wig ee) and Sister Kinghorn.  These are our Single Sister Missionaries who well be working in the PEF/Self Reliance Program.  Our new Self-Reliance Center has opened and we are so excited to have these sisters helping Pres. Blake.  Pres. Blake (Jamaican) is a counselor in the mission presidency as well as the Self Reliance Coordinator.  They will call two Jamaicans to serve as Service Missionaries to work in the center as well.  They will do primarily employment services. Sister Wege is from Louisiana and Sister Kinghorn is recently from Texas.  Both of these sisters have served missions before for they are experienced and ready to go.  Sister Wege even knows how to drive on the left side of the road since one of her previous missions was in London.
 They are in the same apartment as we are so we got to introduce them to Jamaica show them around town and get them something to eat.
 Elder and Sister Vance are also new to the Kingston Jamaica Mission.  We got to pick them up at the airport.  Then they stayed their first night at our apartment.  The next day they moved to their apartment in Junction where they will serve as Church Education System Missionaries.  Pres. Brown was off island so we got the privilege of helping them get acquainted with Jamaica just a little bit.
 They we played on the beach.  Dad labels all the pictures…at least he could have labeled us cute beach bums!!
We also headed out to clean the Vance’s apartment in Junction.  We knew that the Wrights had left it clean but it has been a few months since they went home and we wanted to go and dust and make sure everything was in readiness for them.
We attended the Food For the Poor 30th Anniversary Celebration.  Pres. and Sister Brown were supposed to attend this as representatives of the Church but He was unexpectedly called off island so dad and I attended.  It was a very nice event to thank all of their sponsors for the aid that they were given.  The Church was given a “little token of appreciation” for all of the donations that have been given to FFP.  We would have preferred to have had one of the local leaders there, but they could not attend so we went.  The International President and  CEO of FFP came up to us and introduced himself and personally took the time to say “Thank-you” to the Church for all their donations.
We started shopping (not dads’ favorite thing to do!) for supplies for the wheelchair training that will be happening next month.  We have most of them but need to purchase some tool kits.  It may present a problem with getting them at one place so we will most likely be going around to a lot of places to find what we need in the quantities we need.
Our Jamaican Christmas Devotional will be this next Saturday at 1:30 pm our time. That should make it 11:30 am in Utah. We are two hours ahead Utah so if you want to watch it will be streamed live at the link below.  When we did a test run there was about a 10 minute delay. So if it is not up exactly on time just be patient…soon come…not sure if you want to listen but here is the link… I am in the back row behind the podium trying to hide.  There will be ½ hour of Christmas hymns and then a Cantata followed by a talk by Elder Cornish of the Seventy.  If any of you can record this program please do.
We wanted to wish our daughter Lori and her husband Aaron a happy Wedding Anniversary this past week.  They are a wonderful couple and parents to their three little girls. What a blessing they are to our family.. .Well another week is about to begin so we had better prepare ourselves for another week of missionary service.  Remember we love you all and you are always in our thoughts and prayers…
Love
Mom and Dad
E/S Murdock