The Hills Roll On

It was a very special ‘first family Christmas’ for us here in Spain.  We missed our families and friends in Canada, but I suppose it that time of life now.  Time to start our own family traditionsJ  This year I (Tara) had the pleasure of crocheting (cro-shay-ing) personalized stockings for each of us (with much help from Gavin who assembled all the pieces).  We had so much fun playing Santa after Eden had gone to bed; stuffing eachother’s stockings.  Our pathetically adorable 6 inch tall plastic Christmas tree was delightfully dwarfed by all our presents.  Friends and family blessed us many times over with Christmas cards, care packages and emails.  We felt so loved. Christmas morning was sweet.  Eden had lots of fun opening her stocking and presents.  Gavin got Eden a Tigger doll and Fischer Price Stacking Rings thingee.   She promptly threw everything on the floor.  I got her a shape sorting thingee; again, everything went on the floor so we decided to move from the table to the floor.  We couldn’t really get her to smile for the pics though as she was getting pretty pooped.  So we put her down for a beautiful long nap and we enjoyed our own little Christmas morning; brunch, stockings, and presents. My parents sent us all kinds of great Canadian stuff.  We kept exclaiming: "All right!!!" as we opened those gifts.

Gavin and I had decided we’d do “only-one-homemade-gift-exchange” this year to keep it simple; but we were both mischievous!   My mischief was to make Gavin hunt for his present! With 7 clues on paper (an assortment of riddles and word games.   After about 30 minutes he found his homemade gift: a plate of Rocky Mountain Fudge.  His mischief to me?  He didn’t make the gift…he BOUGHT IT!  But it’s just what I wanted so I forgive him. A beautiful, feminine, silver watch that FITS!  I haven’t had a good watch in over 5 years.  What a sweetheart!  He searched high and low for just the right one.

By afternoon little Eden got all dolled up in her special Cmas outfit from Gramma & Grampa Follis.  Her daddy did her hair up special (isn’t it getting long?!).  Then we headed out on the beautiful, 15º C day a few towns over to spend the rest of our day with our supervisors family and a bunch of folks from the church.  We had a delicious, gigantic turkey meal with all the trimmings.  ¡Que rico! (How tasty!)  Eden was running out of steam soon enough though…no more smiles  All in all a very pleasurable, memorable day. 

“Do you think I’ll go to hell if I wanna kill people for a living?” he asked. My eyes widened, and I choked, ‘”Like an assassin?!” “No…like in the army.” he said.

Wow…what a huge question. Most people don’t usually take the time to really think about it. Most people spend their whole lives ignoring the deepest questions we can ask. What am I here for? Where am I going? The answers seem too elusive; everyone seems to have a different answer…how can you KNOW, really KNOW?

Well, anyone who has met Gavin or I knows that we both came to a point of asking those questions. This isn’t the place to tell you the whole story, but this is a good place to share with you what I shared with my friend when he asked me “am I going to hell?”.

I prayed alot before and as I was composing this and it just seemed to flow in the direction of making the PROBLEM clear. Most people have been fed the lie that the Bible is unreliable and irrelevant so they never take the time to read it…and honestly, unless God is doing SOMETHING in your life to draw you to Himself it won’t make a whole lotta sense anyway. It sure helps to talk it through with someone you can trust and ask hard questions with. God is actively pursuing every person with more intensity, involvement, and urgency than we know…I sense that God is definitely doing something special in your life right now. You wouldn’t even be asking that question (or reading this webpage!) unless God were calling your name….so

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