Merry Christmas! The Savior is born! The Savior--yes, the Messiah, the Lord--has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! Luke 2:11 What a different Christmas for us!  Our typical Tennessee Christmases have been full of parties, friends, family, and traditions. We happily ran here and there to celebrate the season with as many people as we could. We are so grateful for the many important people in our lives that we have had the privilege to celebrate Christmas with in the past years. We are so thankful for families that live close together and the chances to see them all for the holidays.  This year we have had some new experiences.  We went to a candlelight worship service at our new church. It was so lovely! Addalyn got to help pass out candles :) We attended a primary school age group Calypso Competition. It's a part of the Carnival celebration that occurs in St Kitts during December. We are hoping to attend the big parade next week! One

We're here.  We are here. We are really for real here!  We are really, truly, amazingly, actually here! I have to keep reminding myself of this daily, hourly, sometimes minute to minute. One week in, and it still doesn't always feel real.  At our missions training in August we talked about the paradox that missionaries live with. How it's possible to feel two ways at once, think two ways at once, eventually to belong to two places at once. This had been the month of paradox. We spent November saying goodbye and soaking up as much East Tennessee love and memories as possible. We started the month by finding out that we will be getting a NIECE this march!!! Congratulations Adam and Katie and Eli!!! We are so excited for that precious girl to arrive! We also had early Christmas with my (Katelyn's) family so that we could celebrate all together. It was such a fun evening with all our traditions and love and laughter. It means everything to me that