Happy Christmastime!

Hello Friends,


We hope that you had a blessed Christmas time, and are perhaps continuing to enjoy the holiday season.  For those of you surrounded by snow and ice, we are enjoying daytime temperatures of around 90F here!  As you will know from our previous blog, the families and many of the singles are living about two hours drive from the ship.  On Christmas Day we all travelled by minibuses to Durban port, and enjoyed brunch, a Christmas morning worship time (including Patricia and others playing handbells), and a wonderful Christmas dinner, South African style ; no turkey, but sausages and steak cooked on a brii (barbecue to us Brits)!  I had managed to get a few mince pies though, so there was a homely touch.  In all it was different, but very nice!  Elliot enjoyed being back on the ship as he had not been there since June.  Patricia had been on board briefly, and I have been working there during the week, and sleeping in our cabin (constant 92F, day and night...no A/C)!  The biting, flying things semm to like it though, as I've been getting lots of bites there!

...some photos:
Patricia
Link to handbell photo

Next week teams of people will be starting to clean the ship, beginning at the top and working their way down.  Having been in a shipyard for 5 months, and having had lots of metal cut, ground, welded etc, there's a LOT of cleaning to be done...and remember, there's a whole hospital on board.

We'll keep you updated on how all that goes.  We're hoping that we'll all be able to start living on the ship sometime in January, but there's still lots to be done.

Until then, thanks to all of you who support us in one way or another, we are very grateful for all of you.  We especially enjoyed receiving the e-cards!
God Bless You,
T, P & E.