An Invitation, A Meeting, and A Clever Idea

So I wrote all that stuff about our Christmas play and didn't think to invite you. Yes, you're all welcome to come. Wednesday the 22nd. 7pm. Brownsville Mennonite. Take exit 216 off of I-5 and go east about 3 or 4 miles, and we're on the left right before you get into town.

And you know going into it that this is a kids' production with a frazzled director, so arrive with plenty of grace in your pocket. I should add that Arlen K. is taking care of the singing part for the older kids, and Stephie S. for the younger, and the music will be lovely.

And I should add that yesterday I was home all day except for going to a Christmas pageant in the evening, Fairview Mennonite's famous You Are There, and there is something healing about being home all day and getting the bed made and the laundry caught up and the vacuuming done and then going away with your husband in the evening.

Something cool happened at the pageant. I saw a young man walk in and something about the way he walked looked terribly familiar. He looked just like...yes! Marty from our wild Greyhound trip last summer!

If you've traveled much you know how it is when you're stranded overnight in Minneapolis or Spokane or wherever--you form these instant friendships with fellow travelers and talk for hours on end and feel like you've survived something together. And then you exchange email addresses when you finally go your separate ways, but you never see them or hear from them again.

That's how it was with the infamous "Carol" and a couple of older women we met, and with Marty. He was a clean and Christ-like young man about Matt's age who was a rock of safety and sanity to Jenny and me in some very unnerving circumstances. I hadn't expected to ever see him again, but there he was at the Fairview Christmas pageant, of all places. So that was a very unexpected blessing, and it turns out he knows my young friend Heidi Miller and her family, I'm guessing through cattle-dealing connections.

You'd think the Smuckers are competing to be the most clever, and I'll let you decide who won. I have this bad habit of buying and wrapping Christmas presents early and then forgetting what's inside. So this year I wrapped some and wrote the receiver and the contents on a sticky note in German or Pa. Dutch in the most obscure way possible. For example, something I got for Paul says, "Ebbis fa da Mann sei Schrift" and if you don't know Dutch, sorry, I'm not going to translate because he reads this.

I also have gifts for the youngest three that all say, "Schneider." There's a more common word I could have used but they're too familiar with it.

Well, they got their heads together and came up with what they thought was a very clever idea, and secretly got on Google Translator. But their big plans came to naught because apparently Google Translator doesn't work with Pennsylvania Dutch.

We will all just keep quiet about the fact that "Schneider" is way more High German than Pa. Dutch.

Quote of the Day:
"Amish nonfiction novels."
--a Google search that brought someone to my blog