Journal, December 28

Christmas Eve day we visited Ogden area. It was delightful to see the Christmas preparations made by the Stanfords and Soderquists and to spend a few minutes with each of them. We also went to lunch with Dorothy (my sister). We ate a nice meal at Sandy’s, a little home-grown restaurant on Washington Blvd. The highlight was sharing a piece of their coconut cream pie. (Pictured: Stanfords and Soderquists in their Christmas preparations and a Christmas duet from Trinia and Tricia)

In the evening, we lit luminaries at JoAnn’s and Michael’s graves. The tradition to fill the Spanish Fork cemetery with light on Christmas Eve is on the upswing here, with more families participating each year. And there are new devices. It started with luminaries made with candles in paper sacks or quart jars. Now we are seeing many more manufactured candle holders, and multi-colored Christmas lights battery-powered. In the early nightfall with hundreds of these various kinds of little lights, the Spanish Fork cemetery looked very beautiful. Keeping the memory alive of JoAnn and Michael, who both loved Christmas so much, is meaningful to me.

We started the Christmas day with Skype visits with David’s and Valerie’s families. It was fun to interact in this way with each individual, to see their favorite gifts and feel their excitement. Then we drove to Sandy on this pretty day to see Olivia’s and Jack’s Christmas. It was noon when we got to Wendy’s sister Shannon’s place to leave a present for Annette, Wendy’s mother. Wendy gave her a bunch of home-made bibs, a much needed item. We found them (kids and grandkids) finishing a mid-day breakfast meal of Apple pancakes and sausage, which they we good to share with us. Returning home to Spanish Fork, Wendy and I opened our gifts, and Wendy finished food preparations to take to our family dinner at Matthew and Kim’s.

The family gathered for our Lewis family Christmas at Matthew and Kim’s at about 4 pm. We started the gathering with something unusual that had been requested by Elder Hales in his meeting in the last week or so with Spanish Fork area Stake Presidencies and Bishoprics (as reported to us by President Daines in our most recent preparation meeting at the Provo temple). This was, that st Christmas meetings in families this year, there should be set aside a time for a few gospel testimonies about the family and the importance of the gospel to happy families. We initiated this prior to exchanging and opening gifts and we took about 20 minutes total in expressions of gratitude and testimony. I spoke of my great appreciation for the unity and peacefulness in our family relationships, brought on by our mutual commitment to the Gospel. Bruce, Alison, Quin, and Heidi also spoke briefly, and I felt quite tender about the things said. Quin said that he came from a family who were both “believers” and “doers” and he was happy to find someone to marry who came from a family with that same commitment. Alison spoke of letter from Daniel in the MTC saying that he felt an obligation as a member of this family to serve as others have served.

In the gift exchange, as a major gift from Wendy and me to each family, we presented them with a copy of a book of over 400 pages about our mission to North Carolina. We are grateful to Valerie had prepared this book for publication, using our blog entries stating with the time of our call and continuing through the time when we reported our mission in the Spanish Fork Wolf Hollow 2nd ward.

In the early morning hours of the day after Christmas, we made an unexpected visit to the ER at Utah Valley Hospital, because of some bleeding in my bladder. I am very grateful that I was able to hold off on this, until we had had all of our wonderful Christmas experiences. I had to get a catheter inserted at the ER. The bleeding and resulting blockage probably were a result of the combination of an infection that may have caused a little blood vessel in the lining of the bladder to pop, the Plavix that I have been taking for my heart condition causing the bleeding to continue for a time, and my enlarged prostate limiting the fluid able to exit the bladder. No big deal. The bleeding has stopped. I got the catheter out yesterday, and things are normal and working. I am taking Cipro for the infection, and another new medication to help the flow through the prostate. I am not taking the Plavix and probably go off of it permanently when I see my cardiologist, Dr. Carter, in an appointment the end of January.

I want to say parenthetically that I had an almost identical episode in September 2008 three months before our mission. During the mission, I had perhaps half a dozen times when bleeding like this started, but soon stopped and did not interfere with my functioning. I thank the Lord for this amount of “renewal of my body” that I could serve continually and successfully for the 18 month period of our mission.