Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Dear Family and Friends,

As this eventful year winds up we want to wish you all the best during the Christmas season and for the New Year. We are now living on the Triangle Ranch. If you are ever in the Phoenix, Arizona, area please give us a call so we can arrange a visit. We keep ourselves busy by taking care of our house and our big property. We have lots of projects planned (writing stories, taking on-line computer classes, genealogy research, reading a book a week) and hope to get started on them no later than January 1, 2009.

Since most of you have been faithful readers of our mission reports and our blog we will not rehash old news but just give a synopsis of the past four months. We intend to keep adding to our blog so check it periodically.

We left Hungary on 20 August 2008 after a whirlwind tour of Central Europe with our daughter Gwyndolynn and her husband, Eric and Ryan and Kelly. We flew first to the Washington DC area and enjoyed meeting old friends. On 28 August we flew to Phoenix, Arizona. This was a memorable day not just because of our arrival but also because of a huge storm that blew down trees and power lines. When people ask us when we came to the area we use the storm as our common reference. We were attracted to this area because our daughters Rebecca and Lydia live here.

We bought a Toyota Matrix our first weekend in Arizona. We then started looking for our dream home and found it in the Triangle Ranch. While our home was in escrow we visited our daughters Laura and Gwyndolynn in Utah. We saw snow in Utah during the first week of October. We were still using our unheated pool in Arizona the first week in November. We feel blessed to be in a very nice neighborhood and members of a great congregation. Our oldest new friend is 92 years old and there are many other men who are much older than Bob. That makes him happy as he can learn much from this group.

Rose is up to her usual activities when we are in a new home. She has everything in the house organized and has met all the neighbors. She invited them all to our church’s Christmas program but only one came with us. We have a very sociable neighborhood, not too nosy but concerned about the others’ welfare. Part of this bonding may be due to the fact that all the 12 properties on our street use flood irrigation and we have to coordinate and cooperate to prevent water damage when it is our turn to irrigate.

We are healthy and happy to be back in the USA. We voted in the November elections and are anxious to see how the new administration works out the problems it will inherit. We are a bit anxious about the state of the US economy but are also fully confident in the promise God gave through the prophet Malachi as found in the Bible.
We have joined a garden club. We think it will really help us learn about what to plant and how to garden here in Arizona. It is fun visiting other people’s gardens!

We had a great event-filled year with no serious accidents, injuries, or illnesses. We are enjoying resort life living and only working when we want to. We have made many new friends but we want to keep our old friends (remembering the Brownie song) so we would love to hear from you by what ever means it takes, e-mail, phone call, postal service, runner, visit, jungle drums, etc.

We sincerely wish you all the best. We hope this Christmas season brings you peace and joy in your lives and that you are able to enjoy your family members. Families really are of most value and we are thankful for ours!!!

Love,
Rose and Bob