21/12/2023
Christmas 2023
Merry Christmas to everyone and all the best in a new year ahead! We are very thankful for this past year. We are both well and, thus far, dodging most of the hazards of getting a little older. Highlights of the year would include:
We’ve been privileged to continue to do some traveling; one winter trip to Vietnam to visit our son, Jon, who lives in Taiwan, and a second to Egypt where we attended the wedding of our friends Ayman Abouna Abram and Sarah Hanna. Both trips were simply great!
Judi continues to compose music and practice her new instrument, the flute. At church, she has been playing special flute duet arrangements with her teacher that she creates. She also composed flute and trumpet parts for a Christmas cantata at Sackville’s Church By the Lake, where she played the flute part herself. She now has only three piano students and is appreciative of having less teaching work.
Tom busies himself with the garden and yard, guitar-building and woodworking, co-leading some small group bible studies and seems to have no spare time. His major gardening triumph of the season was discovering that one could almost completely eliminate the dreaded Colorado potato bug by mulching the potato rows with straw or almost anything before the potatoes come up - great crop this year.
It’s wonderful to have daughter Jennifer, her husband Declan and grandson Caelan close by in Moncton. We see them a couple of times a week and enjoy lots of meals and times together. Jennifer is building her yoga and restorative yoga business and there is good progress, although the economic belt-tightening of Canadians is apparent.
Jon continues to live in Taiwan and teach English at the high-school level. He’s overdue for a visit here in Canada and that will be hoped-for this summer. Meanwhile, we are planning more Vietnam beach-time with him in February. He and Tom follow the Winnipeg Jets with much devotion. So far, their year has gone well.
Very sadly, our little Mennonite church closed this past year, having suffered so many losses to COVID and the restrictions attending it. We continue to meet as a small group every two weeks or so and we now attend St. George’s Anglican in Moncton. It, too, has lost many attenders over the same period of time but they continue to lead a major ministry to the homeless in Moncton, providing meals and clothing.
Judi and Tom are involved in a new co-op housing project which hopes to build approximately 60 apartment and townhouse units in a development in Sackville. Housing is in short-supply everywhere, it seems. The project is a long way from finished and needs multiplied millions of dollars to get it done but the land is purchased and plans are under way to (hopefully) get building in the coming year. They are reluctantly thinking about down-sizing and moving into the project when it is ready but are dreading going through a lifetime house-full of “stuff.”
Speaking of a lifetime, they celebrated their 50th anniversary this year and are so thankful for great years together and so many memories. (See the attached from the event, June 2, 1973) Even the difficult times seem good, somehow, as they only point out the strength of love and God’s goodness.
May you all experience lots of those blessings in 2024!
Love to all,
Tom and Judi
