Pettingill Pages: Getting Ready for Christmas

Margaret Opal Southworth Pettingill died on December 18th at Joyce's home at age 92. Her 93rd birthday would have been on January 16th. Her funeral will be on Tuesday, December 23rd and Richard will be able to be there to represent our family. She was an amazing woman and we all would do well to learn more about what she has accomplished and try to develop our talents and work with the energy and persistence she demonstrated for 92 years. We will miss you very much.

Life is much simpler when you are on a mission. Our gift giving was never very impressive but it is really simple this year. Immediate family have received their envelopes from Shutterfly and will have a 4 x 6 Christmas from Grandma and Grandpa Pettingill. So we are ready for Christmas.

We haven't gone shopping in the department stores so we haven't seen much in the way of Christmas decorations. On the outside of some large buildings there are some very impressive displays--as in BIG three dimensional trees and bells and swags and star bursts. Christmas merchandising is not a new concept here.

There is a lovely Christmas tree on the second floor in the Institute building and another in the Area Office building.

The doors on our floor are wrapped in wired ribbon. Below is the elevator to our apartment.

This is our neighbors tree as seen by us every time we go in or out of our door. They often have their door open. I'm glad because I'm intrigued by an orange Christmas tree. It is not traditional according to what I am used to, but it is very pretty and goes perfectly with their apartment.

This is our Christmas cache although I now have the decals on the windows so we look festive. We'll leave them up so the Walker girls can rearrange them when they come.

We had a fun "dinner party" a week ago. Sister Cairns is a single sister who works in the temple. She was born in the same city Edgar grew up in but has lived in the USA for most of her life. She helps us one morning a week in the call center and we invited her over to dinner and to teach us how to make enchiladas and Mexican rice. The Francoms came and they had another couple as guests who were being trained on their way to Guyana. We all watched and helped with the dinner preparations, enjoyed getting to know the Whiteheads from eastern Idaho and loved our Mexican dinner complete with a very spicy salsa. We had even found some corn tortillas! Thank you Sister Cairns.

Also last week we went to a choral concert. At the last minute I was wondering why we had agreed to go but I'm so glad we did. Another couple was invited to a choir concert at a stake center and they invited us to go and take them because they didn't know where the building was. Turned out to be very fun. It was not the usual stake choir. It was the national choir of the Dominican Republic and though the sound system was awful (they ended up turning it off) they were great! They sang mostly Christmas music which ranged from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (in English!) to the Hallelujah Chorus. There were also several obviously Dominican numbers with a traditional drum and a scrapey thing. It looks like a round columnar shaped cheese grater with small punched out holes and the man was actually using a pink plastic hair pick with about 12 long teeth to scrape it! The variety in the program and their enthusiasm was very fun. I didn't take my camera because it was in the chapel (but full all the way back through the cultural hall), but I should have. Everyone was taking photos and clapping and having a good old time. It felt like a Christmas celebration!

Rosana organized another party for the volunteers at the Employment Center. This time we all brought food and a CD for the gift exchange. Rosana gave each person an envelope with the name of another volunteer. We read the meaning of the name of each person (very long and involved and quite funny) and then gave them their CD. At the end they all sang Karaoke songs but we sneaked out, not unnoticed--but they already knew we are not the life of the party type.
Rice and chicken are the popular items here. There were three kinds of rice. Every Dominican eats rice at least two times a day. The chicken was very good. There was also green salad and tomatos and some skewers with grapes and ham and green olives and cheese. I brought brownies which were new to several of them. But they decided quickly that they were good to eat and all disappeared very quickly.

Rosana, Sandra, Elizabeth, Sergo and Milagro Saint Hilaire (She is in charge of the literacy program) There were about 20 people in all.

The other thing we did last week was go to the Christmas devotional for the employees. Domingo invited us to go and we heard Elder Johnson (Area President) and Brother Briggs (DTA-Director of Temporal Affairs) give talks and some musical numbers as well. Elder Johnson stressed how important it is to not let other good things replace the reason we celebrate Christmas. He reminded us that the reason for Christmas is to celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ and we should not neglect that focus. He said that in their family of six kids they started the tradition of filling a manger with straw in the month of December. Each child was assigned another family member each week in family home evening. Every day, each person was to do a special and secret service. Every time that they did a service they could put a piece of straw in the manger to make a soft comfortable bed for the Christ child who was coming. Putting a doll in the manger and talking about their experiences became an important part of their Christmas celebration. This is President Johnson. His wife's name is Leann.