New Year's Eve 2016 at John and Yvonne's

Well, another year has come and gone; and it's new year's eve. Wow! Where has the time gone?

We were surprised by a call from Jessica asking if she could come by and join us Saturday evening. What a blessing! She had also been on deployment, and then was transferred to Florida. It was really nice to see her again. Josh, Liam, and Eric were here, as well as Crystal and Kezia.

After meeting the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower on Friday, it was nice to have Austin back in our home! His mom and brother drove here from Texas to meet the ship, and joined us Saturday night for our activities. Austin is the one in the middle!

Yvonne fixed chicken wings, meat balls, a veggie tray, and potato chips for dinner. And then it was chocolate fondue fruit for dessert. Everyone loved the chocolate fondue!

The young lady on the right giving me the "Don't you dare take that picture look is K, a really good friend of Yvonne's. She was in town visiting her father and stayed with us.

 After dinner, our game for the evening was "Catch Phrase!" Sorry, I didn't get any pictures while we were playing the game. But this is what it looks like.

James and Bethany Lokey joined us after dinner. Bethany is Yvonne's cousin, who just a few weeks ago married a man from back home in Oklahoma, who joined the Navy and ended up getting stationed here! Yea!

And this is what it looks like while you're playing it - these next three pics are of Josh's family playing with us when they were here. But, you get the idea. Lots of fun, lots of laughs and giggles!

After the game we lit the candles on the Christmas tree one last time. While we watched the candles I talked about the Christmas story - how the shepherds saw the angels, and went to the manger in Bethlehem to see the baby. And how the wise men saw the star and followed it until they came to the house where the little child was in Nazareth. The shepherds didn't follow the star, and the wise men didn't go to the manger.

I shared the symbolism of the Christmas tree and how it represents eternal life that Jesus came to bring, and how the candles represent Jesus Christ as the light of the world. The point being that God the Father loved the world so much that He sent His Son, Jesus, into the world to bring salvation, and forgiveness of sin to us.

Then we got to talking about our eternal destiny according to the book of Revelation, being the New Jerusalem and not just 'heaven', which sparked an interesting discussion! We talked about the dimensions of the city, and what we would be doing there: ruling and reigning with Christ over the people living on the outside of the city, and bringing the love of Christ out to them, encouraging them to believe and come into the city.

When the candles burned down to a nub we finally extinguished them. Several people decided to call it a night, except Crystal, Josh, and Eric. Eric began playing the guitar and we sang some hymns while we waited for the ball to drop!

At midnight we all wished each other a Happy New Year and made a beeline for bed. It was a really great New Years Eve!

Joshua Ellinor's Family Comes For A Visit!

Saturday night we had two special treats!

We had a new sailor, Billy Wetter, from the USS Kearsarge join us for our activities.

Josh went home on leave over the 4th of July weekend and his family drove back with him. Josh's father, brother and sister all joined us.

Andrew Raffety and John Ortiz were here too!

On the menu were hot dogs, french fries, and Klondike Bars for dessert.

Almost all the games we play are for from two to six players. We had 9 people here Saturday night so we played the electronic version of Catch Phrase! and Taboo! We split up into two teams and went to town trying to get our teams to guess the right words and phrases. We laughed, and had a lot of fun!

Jeremiah Ellinor, Rachel Ellinor, and Darrell Ellinor

I had to get a decent picture of Josh's father!

Josh Ellinor is the one in the white socks!

Here Jeremiah is trying to get our team to guess the right words. Rachel is laughing. She knew the right answer.

She really got a kick out of the answers we were giving!

Now it's Yvonne's turn! Her first word when she starts her turn is "Uh!"

Then her hand starts moving!

Rachel's paying close attention!

There really were other people on her team! It was Rachel, John Ortiz, and Billy Wetter on Yvonne's team.

Billy Wetter is the one on the right

Don't these guys look excited? It was really nice to have Billy here! It was a fun night.

After our games we shared prayer requests, especially for Bev Sawyer, Jerry Lucas, Billy Holcomb's father, and Theresa Daniels, four people from our church who are all battling cancer!

After everyone else left Andrew told us that his grandmother may also be dying from cancer. He just found out. Yvonne and I prayed with him again before he left.

Sunday afternoon Cristian Fabela and Andrew Raffety came over for dinner. Yvonne made Orange Chicken, Brown Rice, and Salad for dinner along with homemade wheat bread. For dessert Yvonne made cinnamon rolls.

After dinner we watched the 2016 Euro Cup finals. For those of you who are not international sports fans, that is the European finals Soccer Game. Reaction being much the same as when Americans play the Superbowl!

Great game even though it was still tied 0 to 0 at the end of the game when it went into overtime! We had to leave early because Yvonne and I had an evening service to attend at our church. We had to take Cristian back to his barracks first, and on the way in the second overtime period Portugal won! It is the first time they've won a trophy so it was really special for them.