Greetings to you all,                                                         12/20/1996

            The Christmas season has arrived again and so we send our warm greetings to you. We pray that this finds you in good health, in body, soul and spirit.

We have lots and lots of snow.  We have had all together about 70 inches of snow fall so far this winter.  We have more snow already than we had in the whole of last winter.  Right now, Don is busy clearing the snow from the driveway that is nearly a half mile long and it is hilly as some of you know.  The other day, Philip Gross and Paul Walter from the Espanola Hutterian colony came to help shovel snow off from the garage roof.  Because of the snow storms, we also lost electricity several times, once for about a week, during which time Michi and the ladies took our clothes to the Espanola colony for washing.  At the Espanola they were out of commercial power also but their huge generator was going so they had electricity.  They were out a week longer than we were.  Thank you for your kindness, dear friends at Espanola. 

The snow is lovely.  It is amazing that tiny snowflakes put together can make a snow‑pile that is  several feet high, not only in a small area but as far as we can see.  Isn't it correct that every snow flake has a different pattern?  When we look at this soft white snow, we think of God's mighty power, and want to sing a hymn, "Whiter Than Snow."  We are thinking about verses in Psalm and Isaiah that we wish to be clean as white as snow. 

Do you think that the closer one gets to the Lord, the better one can see the dirty part of himself or herself that one has not noticed before?  The snow reminds us to be pure and clean, too...

Also, we appreciate the electricity and the warm house, although Michi found it to be kind of fun to cook on the outdoor grill, and we all enjoyed watching the snow fall and sitting together by the fireplace, singing hymns or reading books by flashlight or lamps.  We are careful of using our dishwasher for fear of losing electricity with a dishwasher full of dirty dishes.  Twice, we got caught that way when the electricity went out.  We took the dishes out, heated water on the outside grill, and washed them.  Our ice cream is still buried in two feet of snow.  It is too deep to dig it out.  We also found out that we have very kind neighbors.  We can help each other at the time of troubles which is wonderful.

Don is busy both outdoors and indoors.  He has more than enough to do outdoors.  Plus he is busy working on a Windows 95 version of our accounting software that we sell to doctors, in addition to the technical support he has to do all day.  Michi knows how to keep herself busy, too.  Don and Michi both are blessed with good health although Don had a bit of heart trouble recently and was in the hospital overnight  His sister June, who is a nurse, and our sons insisted, so he went.  The doctor said he had a mild heart attack.  During this time we received lots of love and concerns from our sons, Don's siblings and Randy Vigil, our true neighbor, who came to our house to care for the rest of family.  Our son Jim is staying with us during the Christmas vacation to help his father.

Pat was with us during the summer, but he is back in Berlin again, going to a technical university there.  If you have a computer with Internet access, he would love to hear from you.  His address is 70674.2315@compuserve.com.  While he was here, he put a new hot tub in the green house, which, being raised with a hot tub in her house as a child, Michi really appreciates.  Now you cannot see out the windows while in the hot tub as the snow is covering the windows up to the roof.  Don had to put boards on many of the windows of our house to keep the snow from breaking the windows, as the snow was up about 3/4ths of the way to the roof on the east and west sides of the house where the snow falls off from the roof.