Arizona Christmas

I wasn’t sure what kind of a Christmas we would celebrate in Arizona. Here’s some highlights we enjoyed:


Favorite desert decoration: a many-headed cactus sporting a Santa hat on each of its separate
heads (like a hydra).

Favorite lighting display: Downtown Tempe with a London Bridge appearance as you enter the town, quaint shops with outdoor tables at the restaurants and large imperfectly shaped white lighted stars hanging randomly in the trees lining the sidewalks.  Glendale also had nice lighting and offered outdoor hayrides around the town park.

Favorite Fun Activity: Attending a live performance of The Forgotten Carols on stage at Arizona State University.

Favorite respectfully reverent activity: Bringing 6-year old Emma and her mom to Remembering Christ at Christmas. It was more than an exhibit of nativities. There were live animals–3 burros, a couple of lambs, baby chicks and rabbits and a huge turtle. Hot cocoa and elephant ears were served for refreshments, and singing groups entertained. 2nd favorite activity was attending the Mesa Temple grounds to view millions of beautiful colored lights and hear a short outdoor concert performed by the Mesa AZ missionaries. [It was pretty cold outside or it might have been first on my favorite list.]

Favorite family activities: Hearing grandson Tom’s talk before he left for his mission to Argentina; going to a ward Christmas party with Mike and Ayesha’s family, and having friends from Utah stay at our place for a couple of days.

Favorite ways to interact with others:  We filled eight goodie baskets and took them to people we know.  We bought some school clothes for Emma.  Mike's family came to our home for Christmas dinner then serenaded several of our neighbors  by singing Christmas Carols to them.

Favorite Foods: Ham in mustard/brown sugar sauce, cheese potatoes, peas, salad, rolls, fresh pineapple, COOKIES and ice cream.

Favorite Charity: [not in AZ] Options 360 of Battle Ground, WA, a pregnancy clinic which helps young women choose not to abort their babies.



Arizona Culture: I didn’t get an opportunity to taste the tamales but I’m told they are a special treat with Arizona families. A cultural aspect of the Christmas tradition here are the luminaries (paper sacks) lining front yards with a soft candle glowing inside each paper sack.

LDSW #6 Christmas Tree Hunt

LDSW #6 - Christmas tree in wilderness

     It was mid afternoon on a late December day. The wind was cold enough to bite through our winter coats, but the sun was shining. Two of our sons came with us to help find the most perfect Christmas tree. We never bought one off a lot, we wanted to find our own. We went up into the Gifford Pinchot National Forest to find our tree.


     We stopped several places as we climbed up a gravel logging road but we wanted a noble fir, and they grow higher up on the mountains than the Douglas firs. There was no snow but the puddles on the road had frozen solid. It was twilight when we found a tree we wanted. We were at the top of Silver Star mountain. We could look down from the ridge to the South and see the Columbia River winding way down below. To the North was and equally steep dropoff. Our gravel road was on top of the ridge. We cut the tree and hurried back into our warm car. Darkness was coming on quickly. We came up over a little rise and the road stopped. Then we turned around, went back a little ways to a fork in the road. We prayed to know which way to go. We felt prompted to go down the road that looked most traveled, which wasn’t much. We had barely gone a few feet in the dark when we came to a fence and couldn’t go any further. So we turned around, went back to the fork and went down the other road. It was rough and rocky, but it did go down the mountain. An hour later we were on a good highway headed back home.


     We wondered why the Lord would direct us to take the wrong road first? Our conclusion was about the same as a similar story told by Elder Boyd K. Packer in the Fall 2011 General Conference. The Lord wanted us to know which way was the wrong way first. If we had taken the other road first, we might have turned around and gone back to the wrong road and become more lost in the darkness on that cold, windy ridge.

Seeing The Forgotten Carols

A friend I work with on my volunteer job gave us a pair of tickets to see the final performance of the 20th Anniversary season for The Forgotten Carols live and onstage at Arizona State University.  Though I have owned the book and CD for several years, I never dreamed I would ever see it in person because they typically tour in the mountain west, where I don't live--but this Christmas season we are in Arizona!

After the formal bows and standing ovation, Michael McLean, the author, star, director etc. put on an extra half-hour performance. Sitting at the grand piano, he combined nostalgia about the Carols over the years, played more music, had a guest singer sing and then reverently asked the audience to join in singing Silent Night, and to not clap afterwards. Everyone exited the theater quietly and reverently. It was a wonderful, spirtually uplifting atmosphere. And the Christmas lights in downtown Tempe added to the specialness of the occasion as we drove back home.  This is the best Christmas present I could have ever been given!

LDS Witness - #4 Saved from a Dark Street Corner

     When I was a teenager growing up in Portland, Oregon as a high school freshman, was invited to a party by people I thought were my friends. It was on the other side of
     Portland in the west hills, and the hostesses were girls I had known a little from church. My best friend, Dolores, and her boyfriend took me to the party but that was the last I saw of them. I was worried when I learned the girls’ parents were not home. I was suspicious of what some boys from a rival high school were drinking, and I was really alarmed when they turned out the lights and started slow dancing. There was one other girl at the party who didn’t pair off and start dancing. I told her I was going to leave and she too wanted to leave.
     My dad had an extra job on Saturday nights and my mom didn’t drive. We were on our own. We had to take a bus to downtown Portland and transfer to a second bus. Then I had to choose between riding this bus several blocks away from my normal stop and walking about 8 blocks home on a darkened street, or getting off at my normal stop and waiting an hour for a third bus which would stop right across the street from my house. Caroline had to transfer to another bus so we split up. Even though it was about midnight, I elected to wait an hour for the bus that came closest to my home.
     The intersection where I got off had a grocery store with a single light bulb burning in the back. It was on the northwest corner. On the southwest corner stood a small drugstore with a doorway cutting across the corner with a recessed entry. The southeast corner had a very dark gas station and the northeast corner had a beer tavern, which was still open. That was where I had to catch the third bus. I decided to wait in the shadows of the drugstore, where I could watch the oncoming traffic and would have plenty of time to cross the street and catch the bus.
     I waited about a half hour in the doorway. Then a car pulled up at the curb next to the drugstore. Two big men got out and started walking toward me, asking questions about the bus schedule. It may have been my imagination but I think they wore big tan trenchcoats and big floppy hats. I did not want to get trapped in the doorway. I thought if I went over to the tavern that there might be other people there, which meant safety in numbers to me. I stood at the curb waiting for a car to make a left turn, then I would run. Just then the car stopped right in the middle of its turn and a young male voice called out, “Lois, do you want a ride?” I certainly did! Though I didn’t recognize who called, if he knew me, that was good enough! When I got closer I saw that it was my girlfriend Dolores’ brother and his neighbor friend who were a couple of years older than me. Gratefully, I climbed into the backseat and they took me straight home.
     The miracle was that if I had not been standing on that curb at that very minute, they would have driven right past me. I still wonder, how did they recognize me on that dark corner?
     I see it as a blessing of protection from a loving Heavenly Father who recognized that I had left a bad party. He knew my immediate needs and saved me from who knows what?

LDS Witness #3 -Tender Mercies of the Lord in Toronto

When my husband and I were serving a Church mission for the LDS Church in 2000-2001 we inheirited the apartment that the previous missionary couple had lived in. It was on the 8th floor of a 16-story apartment building. We had a balcony overlooking a park with brilliant autumn leaves painting the landscape. That was the positive side of having the apartment. The negatives outweighed the positives; they being the construction of a subway below us with constant pile drivers going from 6 am to 10 pm every day except Sunday; pets in the hallways and elevators that carried fleas which jumped on my legs and bit me; weird cooking smells throughout he building and a man who had the apartment below us who smoked in his bathroom and the smoke came into our bathroom–not a good odor for a pair of missionaries to wear!

We prayed for help in finding a better apartment. That isn’t easy in a city where ALL Landlords work from 9 am to 4 pm five days a week. They never open their doors or answer their phones during off hours. We worked the same hours. Another problem was that they all wanted a year’s lease and we would only be there 11 more months.

But this is what we got: We didn’t have to sign a year lease. The rent fit our price range. We got a carpeted apartment (most apartments had cold, hard floors), located on the second floor, front corner (away from strange cooking odors), only had normal traffic noises we could live with. No pets were allowed except service animals (no fleas). We were low enough that my arthritic knees could climb a flight of stairs in event of a power failure. We had two bedrooms and underground indoor parking (good to have when snow was on the ground six months of the year). We had evergreen trees outside our balcony which reminded us of home, and some playful black squirrels in the yard to watch. We also met some lovely people at Church to socialize with.


My husband was able to play basketball every week, and went to sales where he could buy furnishings for missionary apartments, activities he enjoyed doing. I had a friend who would meet me at the mission office on my lunch hour and take me to a park or a mall. It was a great experience.

Other positives about our mission included saving money in our bank account, letters from our kids and grandchildren, and we had a great cultural experience meeting people from many countries and tasting their foods. We went to an authentic Chinese New Year and authentic Iranian New Year party. We planned a Dominion Day picnic for our ward.

We missed two weddings and two funerals of family members, and welcoming a new grandson but that was something we could deal with.  It was a great experience!