One holiday after another

It is now post-Thanksgiving and pre-Christmas, and there's news related to both. As for Thanksgiving last week, through our consular office we organized a Thanksgiving dinner last Thursday night. We have to do it at night because it's not a holiday here, and many people have to work. For the first 20 or 25 years here, we would often pass right through the end of November and never think of Thanksgiving, especially the years I was teaching and we had the bookshop.

There were 42 present at the dinner, which we had asked a restaurant in a hotel to fix. Since the chef isn't American, he didn't get it just right on the various traditional foods for Thanksgiving, but we had a good time being with others and before we began, I led in a Thanksgiving prayer. And it's not just words. We are thankful.

The other big news is about Christmas. Since José Carlos and Marcia are going to be away, as well as Jackie and Jaime---the families in the church we usually spend Christmas Eve and Christmas with---we thought about getting away for a week or so after Christmas, taking advantage of a special deal. But since we're to be in the US for two weddings, one the last weekend of January and the other the first weekend of February, I decided to suprise Abbie by getting tickets for us to go to the US on Christmas Day. I'll come back the first week of January, and then go back again at the end of the month for the weddings. Abbie, in the meantime, will spend the month of January with her parents or with Joy and Mark in Arkansas. I had wrapped up the ticket information and told her to open it to discover where we'd be on Christmas. When she saw "Pueblo, Colorado", she had a meltdown. It will be our first Christmas in the US since 1975. Of course, for most of Christmas Day itself we will be in the air or in airports. We leave at 6 a.m. Madeira time and arrive 24 hours later in Denver, still on Christmas Day. The 7-hr. time difference means Christmas Day will be 31 hours long for us.

We're looking forward to seeing the kids and the grandkids, of course, plus our families (Abbie's parents and my mother) and some of our brothers and sisters, at least.

Right at the time I was planning this trip, which would mean us being separated for almost three weeks, I also had to go to Lisbon for consultations at the Embassy. Since it would just be going there and coming back, and the government wouldn't pay the $250 for Abbie's ticket if she went, I would be going by myself. The question was whether I would be gone one night, or two. Abbie was adamant: "Two nights apart, no way." I really wondered how she would accept the idea of three weeks, and on opposite sides of the Atlantic. An amazing thing happened: she, who would not hear of me spending just one more night 600 miles away, seemed all too willing and glad to spend three weeks without me nearly 5000 miles away. Female logic. Go figure.

When we were discussing the possibility of travelling after Christmas, we each had a condition: Abbie said "not far"; I said "not north" (meaning, no snow or cold, please). Looks like we both gave in.

1 Month and 20 Years

1 Month

It's been a month since my last post. Up until a week or so ago, I had no break from translation work. The same old story. Once the avalanche starts, all I can do is ride it out and wait for it to go away. About the time I got to the end of the translation work, Madeira got hit by a spell of bad weather, intense rains and winds. For over a week we sometimes had a telephone connection (and therefore Internet), but most of the time we didn't. When the phone company finally got around to seeing about our complaint, they told us what we had suspected: water had gotten into a junction box. Most of the time the connection was shorted out, and just as sure as I would notice there was a connection, by the time I got the e-mails downloaded and tried to reply to messages, the connection would go down again. I did get some reading done, however, for a change.

There was also a an overnight, two-day trip to Lisbon, followed by a two-night spell of struggles with an unidentified bug. The best medicine turned out to be rest.


20 Years


Marcia, as long-time readers will remember, started out this year learning that she had Hodgkins lymphoma. After about 8 months of chemotherapy, she spent a month on the mainland doing radiation treatments. The doctors say there are no signs of cancer now. Today she flew to Brazil to spend the rest of the year with her folks. José Carlos and Susana will join her on Dec. 18 and return in early January. Yesterday was their 20th wedding anniversary and there was a special service in the church to commemorate the date. Mainly, it was a thanksgiving service for what God has done in their lives this year. 20 years or not, that's always in order!