Christmas 2015

 Christmas Eve was just the four of us.  We started the evening with our traditional Mexican Food dinner. 

I even made homemade pecan and pumpkin pie (even the crust was from scratch - shocking, I know!). 

We had a nice evening and watched a Christmas Evening that Trinity Baptist Church in Florida had recorded (this church has come on outreach many times). 

We spent time on Skype with Ken and Nancy... we sure do miss them.

Later that evening, our sending church arranged for us to be able to watch the PaulAnn Christmas Eve service live!  It was great to be apart of it even with an ocean between us.

If you would like to watch the PaulAnn Christmas Eve service you can by clicking this link. 

PaulAnn had three services that night,  We watched the first one at 3:30 Texas time which was 11:30 pm our time.  After it was finished we started to get things shut down for the night and head to the bed.  Sometime after midnight, my cell phone rang .... it was our friend Debs.  I knew at that point something was wrong.  She had fallen and thought she might have broke her arm.   Everything changed from that moment.

Let me backup a little.... Deb's is an incredible lady and friend.  She has Cerebral Palsy but has never let that keep her down.  She lives on her own in a flat at the church (across the street from us).  She gave us a set of keys over a year ago in case we would ever need to get in.  The week before Christmas we were visiting and for some reason we were talking about the cell phone and the "do not disturb" etc.  Mark had mentioned that when someone is in your favorites and they call more than once when it is on "do not disturb" then it will override that and ring.  Well, Christmas Eve after midnight (or really by then it was Christmas) my phone rang and it was Debs.

Mark and I quickly told the kids that we needed to go help Debs and possibly take her to the hospital and we headed out the door.  It took a while to get her up off the floor and out to the car.  We headed to the ER .... Long story short she did in fact break her arm and was told that she would need to have surgery later on that day.  Mark and I headed home after she was admitted to her room and got a few hours of sleep.







We had Christmas with the kids when they woke up and enjoyed a nice brunch and family time. 

 

Later that day Mark and I headed back to the hospital to wait with Debs until she had surgery.  We even took some of her presents to her and we had Christmas in the holding area for the surgery ward.  Even in spite of all the pain she was in she still managed to laugh and have a great attitude.  She knew God was in control and He would see her through this. 

Later that afternoon she was out of surgery.  A plate and eight screws later!  We also found out that when the bone broke it bruised her radial nerve.  This is what has caused her a very long road of recovery.  One that she will share about in another post.