Prince Albert, Saskatchewan,

Canada, S6V 6Y3 December 2002

Dear Friends,

A very blessed Christmas from the Rye family! We started with a white Christmas 2001, which thawed very rapidly. On January 8^th the temperatures were above zero and there was grass visible in our garden. John and Christine managed two days of cross-country skiing in March but our children had opted not to do cross country skiing . The downhill slopes were making snow so we were all able to enjoy days outside. New year was celebrated with a dance party at our church and one a few days later which was a fun(d)raiser for Michael’s school trip to Quebec.

Michael, now 17, is in his penultimate year at St. Mary’s high school. He needs to pass 12 units in both French and English to graduate with a bilingual certificate. He is now driving very competently and has been entrusted with his Phys. Ed. Teacher’s car on several occasions. He took a major role in his schools entry to the drama festival and also enjoys ‘ improv’ at lunchtime. He enjoyed the French trip to Quebec City and Montreal in June after school finished. He now has an electric guitar which is rarely played as quietly as he said it could be!

Peter, almost 15, is in his final year at Holy Cross School and will join Michael at St. Mary’s in September. Sports of any kind are a major joy for him, and his team just won a volleyball tournament in the south of the province. He performed well in the city athletics track meet this past summer, culminating in racing the last leg of the 4x100m relay and bringing victory to the team. He is a good team player and it gives us great pleasure to watch him cheering on and encouraging his team in all sports. He is working towards grade 6 piano and enjoys playing his guitar.

Deborah, now 10, continues to enjoy both ballet and tap dancing. She is in the school choir and has started playing the violin. The family is amazed at how good it sounds! She took part in a play called The Hiding Place and was a young girl in Ravensbruck. Christine took the part of a prison woman and Michael helped as stage crew.

John continues to see patients in the office and assist with orthopedic surgery. He is also involved with an assessment team looking at injuries for government insurance, as well as doing one shift a month in the minor emergency clinic and a 24 hour shift per month in the outpatients (accident) department in Nipawin. The paperwork seems to have doubled over the past year, not solely due to laboratory results that get faxed as well as sent snail mail. He is currently writing a Christmas play for the Sunday School about the inn in Bethlehem where Joseph reserved a room but other groups decide their need is greater before he gets there with Mary. He’s also done two bird counts this year.

Christine completed her palliative care certificate from Grant MacEwan College in Edmonton and graduated in April. Teaching skills in health care was a challenge but most enjoyable. She needs to take time to plan some more teaching sessions on the ward. She continues to work part time on the palliative/medical ward though it is hard to stick to only 24 hours a week because of the acute nursing shortage. She has just completed her term as program director at Camp Okema and was a delegate at Anglican synod. This year she co-led a camp for 7-9 year olds, and Peter and Deborah worked as counsellor and child-care person.

Golf with John’s parents, Ted and Hazel, was a major feature of the summer for Peter and Michael. They were out on the golf course almost every morning before 6am for the month of August. Occasionally Deborah joined them at a shorter course later in the day. We are very blessed to have them so close as they do the vast majority of the school and sports runs with our children.

A major forest fire just west of Prince Albert at the end of June caused thick smoke and ash deposit in the city. It burned for over a week and many people were evacuated from their homes. It was amazing that not a single property was lost. It prompted fire drills at our camp, which was only 20 km away in the forest. A heavy wind-storm blew a young tree onto a power line which was observed by several staff. They waited until the smoking branch fell and put it out with a fire extinguisher. God was very good to us. Had it been one of the older trees we would have lost the camp.

It was a pleasure to have John and Daphne Fleetcroft to stay a few days with us, and they did see a bear,which we don‘t guarentee to all our visitors.

This year we camped in a tent for the month of July. Our dodge Grand caravan took us as far as Washington DC, New York, the North Carolina coast and Quebec. On the way we stopped in Wisconsin Dells and visited the International Crane Foundation. We have seen Sandhill Cranes several times near our home and the rare Whooping cranes pass through here on migration. In Eagle Lake Park Wisconsin, where there were also cranes, there was a star party. We were able to look through telescopes at stars, planets and satellites. A really enjoyable experience was the annual circus parade in Milwaukee. It was almost as hot as the day we spent visiting the B&O Railway museum in Baltimore, only 41C. Washington DC is a very open, airy city. The White house and the Pentagon were closed because of September 11, but we enjoyed the Lincoln memorial, the White House Visitors centre and several of the museums that comprise the Smithsonian.

New York, in contrast, was more closed in with lots of tall buildings and busy streets. We used city transport and were astounded to discover that parking on Manhattan Island would have cost us $10US per half hour! We camped in Liberty Park, right by the marina and could see downtown Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty from outside our tent. The site was secure and both the Manhattan ferry and the new tram left from close to the campsite. We visited Ground Zero. The buildings around show many scars from the intense heat. A traffic light one block away was melted. The hole was 7 floors deep and would bury our local hospital with nothing visible.

We toured the United Nations and were surprised to discover they have meetings there all the time, not just the once a year that we had supposed. The artworks it contains are expressions from the member countries of their views of peace.

The New York stock exchange has been closed to the public since September 11, but John is a great fan of Wall Street week on TV so enjoyed walking the length of the street, Trinty church at the end is actually quite big. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art, we took a tour, which spanned the artwork from many countries and eras. Deborah particularly enjoyed looking at Degas’ sculpture of the Peach Ribbon Dancer, as she had read a book about the little girl.

Central Park was beautiful and peaceful, particularly after watching a fire engine charge up a busy, four lane, one-way street, the wrong way! We saw the Lennon memorial, “Imagine”, a man walking a large tortoise, the Hans Christian Anderson statue with the Ugly Duckling in the story corner, and the Alice in Wonderland sculpture.

We also wandered around the outside of the Lincoln Centre, and Madison Square gardens. A large Toys R Us had a full size Ferris wheel inside it, and a large working model of a Jurassic Park T-Rex. The news was being broadcast on the outside of the ABC studios. Macy’s had its Christmas train but no toys. We have obviously seen Miracle on 34^th St too many times.

We miss the sea, living in Saskatchewan, so thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent on the grand banks of North Carolina. The Atlantic there is comfortably warm. The children got some belly boards and shredded their abdomens in the breakers. It didn’t stop them going back for more the next morning. The opposite side of the bank is fresh water so the road and houses are built on a sand dune. The fresh water ponds make it a thriving place for birds, including Egrets and Herons. Snapping turtles swim there. We were forbidden to feed the laughing gulls because this encourages them to raid the bird and turtle eggs in the spring. Out west we would let them get fed and sell hunting licences in the fall! Okrakoke Island has wild horses believed to be descended from the Spanish horses that survived shipwrecks. It also has tales of Blackbeard the Pirate who lived there.

In May, Christine and Deborah went to England to visit Christine’s parents. Mum was undergoing a third year of chemotherapy. It was a very precious time with them. Christine is writing this from England. Mum went to be with her Lord on December 3^rd. She had suffered a lot of pain and medication side effects over the past few months but her spirit remained strong. We had a wonderful service of thanksgiving for Mum’s life on December 10^th. She taught us that God cares about the little things in our lives. He doesn’t mind us asking for parking spaces or the car to start on a cold morning. She loved Christmas and my 6 year old niece summed it up perfectly when she said

“It’s a shame Granny can’t be with us this Christmas, but she’s spending it with the Birthday Boy”. May God bless each of you this Christmas and through 2003.

John, Christine, Michael, Peter and Deborah Rye