LETTRE VINGT-CINQ POUR LE 6 JANVIER, 2013

The number of this letter happened to fit with the date that I am writing about first.  We awoke on Christmas morning with excitement to open our presents.  Fortunately, we had something to open thanks to Jack, Sherry and Natalie.  They had sent a Christmas package containing wrapped gifts and messages intended to be read and opened during several days leading up to Christmas.  We enjoyed a wonderful Christmas morning by reading each poem, story or saying and opening the present with the corresponding number.  We enjoyed the creativity used by the Pagets to match each gift with the message.  The final message was a beautiful Christmas tree that Natalie had drawn.  The related present was a miniature Christmas tree that we placed in middle of our table.  It became our apartment Christmas tree until New Years Day.  

An artificial Christmas tree was set up and decorated at the office by one of the missionaries with lights and ornaments that were small pictures of each missionary in the France Lyon Mission.  We will remember one of the presents all year because it is a book of daily inspirational church history thoughts entitled, All is Well.

 We enjoyed skyping with most of our family members on Christmas eve or on other days during the holiday season.  Four missionaries came to our apartment on Christmas evening to use our skyping capabilities to communicate for one hour each with their families. We enjoyed hearing the excitement of these encounters with their families from Calgary, Alberta (Stanford); Gresham, Oregon (Hanset); North Salt Lake, Utah (Haiparai-Hansen:  His mother is Tahitian); and Orem, Utah (Kunz).  All of the missionaries in our Lyon Zone gathered at the Ecully chapel for a training meeting on December 27^th led by the zone leaders.   We were sad to miss Abby’s baptism service on December 29^th.

The days leading up to the end of 2012 were packed with a lot of accounting activities and year end journal entries that were completed with Sister Jeppson’s help on New Year’s Eve.  Instead of staying up past 12:00 a.m. our time, we decided to celebrate the arrival of the New Year of 2013 using mountain standard time of 8:00 a.m.  on January 1^st with a breakfast of a croissant stuffed with scrambled eggs and bacon.  Members of the Villeurbanne Ward fixed and served a delicious New Years Day lunch at the ward building for all of the Lyon missionaries.

NOS PETITS-ENFANTS

We were very happy today to attend church meetings for the first time in 2013 beginning at 9:00 a.m. instead of 2:00 p.m.  We switched meeting times with the other ward that meets in our building.  Today, Grandma and I began listening to Histoires Du Livre de Mormon in French while following along with this French version of Stories of the Book of Mormon for children.  As I have mentioned in other letters we also listen to ten pages of the Book of Mormon in English while following along in French.  There are no recordings in French that are available.  This activity helps us to learn from the scriptures and improve our French.  We encourage you to read from the Book of Mormon or Stories of the Book of Mormon every day during 2013 along with Grandma Jeppson and me. This will help the church history saying of All is Well be applicable to all our lives in 2013.