The Neely Team

The last week of December was an unbelievably BUSY week… but it was also one of the highlights of the year because it was filled to overflowing with something we love: having tons of people in our home! During the whole week, we had fantastic fellowship and magnificent memories! Let’s tell about the first part first… and maybe we’ll catch up on all the stories before another week goes by…

It started on December 26th. Actually, it was closer to December 27th. After a busy day of preparation, the younger ones had gone to bed and all of the rest of us were waiting with much anticipation for Mommy’s brother and his family to arrive! Though we have seen them several times this year at their home, Uncle Dan, Aunt Lisa, David, Brian, Rachel, and Samantha had not been to our house in over eight years!! (Way too long!!) Well, they finally arrived… and, for now, we’ll let the whole Team give you the highlights of our time together.

Hannah: “Playing games with David and Brian was fun.”

Kathryn: “One of my favorite memories of the weekend was lying out on our deck (in the freezing cold, that is ) looking at the stars, the brilliant moon, and Mars, exclaiming rather loudly about the funny shapes we saw in the passing clouds, and discussing the magnificent wisdom and goodness of our Creator! When we became so cold that we couldn’t stand it any longer, we came inside, prepared steaming cups of hot chocolate, and then went to the basement to spend some time in sharing prayer requests and praying together. What a blessing to have cousins that aren’t just relatives… but good friends and those with whom we can share what the Lord has been teaching us!! A few more highlights were showing Brian some things about the violin, as well as finding out that he is finally taller than me!:)” 

Dad: “It was just a blessing to have them here; it’s been a long time! We’ve been the recipients of their wonderful hospitality many times but they seldom give us the opportunity to return it. I have had a tremendous respect for and have admired big brother Dan for many years and consider myself blessed to be part of their family.  I especially enjoyed our time out with just Dan and Lisa.”

Bethany: “I liked playing with Brian! Herman was a cowboy and me and Brian were the bad guys. It was fun!”

Amanda: “We had a FANTASTIC time with the Conns!! It was such a blessing to have great fellowship with family, and we thoroughly enjoyed having them in our home again after eight too-long years! Without a doubt, my favorite part was the prayer meeting that David, Brian, Jessi, Kathryn, Victoria, and I had on Monday night! There was such a unity between us as we exchanged prayer requests and then lifted our prayers to God! To hear each other’s hearts and then to pray about it together was extremely uplifting, to say the least! Another one of my favorite things was the time that I had to talk one-on-one to Rachel, sharing with her, and her sharing with me. It was a very special time! I also thoroughly enjoyed the general time with everyone… playing games, talking to Uncle Dan and Aunt Lisa, getting up early to make breakfast with our cousins – it was all wonderful!”

Susanna: “One of my favorite times was getting to play in a little hideout with Rachel, Lauren, and Herman. We pretended that we were orphans and that that was a house that our pretend grandfather had once used as a hiding spot during a war. We even “found” some old things that he had hidden in secret places! That was so fun!”

Mom: “How exciting to have my brother and his family here for a visit!! I loved all the  one-on-one time chatting, and our couples night out was a definite favorite!!”

Lauren: “I really liked it when all the parents went out for supper and left all of the kids at home together. We played “Sardines” and “Hide-n-Seek” in the dark!! Then, when the parents called and told us that they were on their way home, we all hid in the basement shower together! It was really squished and kind of hot, but it was so fun! Then the parents had to find us when they came inside. How funny!”

Herman: “I thought it was fun to shoot David’s air-soft gun!”

Victoria: “Our whole weekend was a HUGE blessing! I really enjoyed all the time we got to spend playing games and getting to know all of our cousins better. Spending one-on-one time with Samantha playing the violin was also a  blast!”

Jessica: “Wow! I was told to write a brief summary of my favorite part, but what can you say when everything was buckets of fun! I didn’t used to think about the relationships that I have with our cousins, but the older I get, the more I realize what a treasure I have, not to just have cousins, but to consider them friends. This time that we had to make  memories with them was something that will not soon be forgotten. It is difficult to pick one thing that was my favorite because  everything was so much fun! Lots of memories were made playing “Sardines” and having thirteen people crowded into a small area, laying outside on the deck in freezing weather looking at the stars and talking about the greatness of our Creator, getting up early and making breakfast together, having meaningful discussions, and the list could go on! It was hard to let them leave, but we look forward to the next time we get together, whether it is at our house or theirs!”

I have been trying to get this up for several days, but it’s better late than never, right? So…

Every year, we try to think of ways to simplify the Christmas season so that we can concentrate more on the true meaning of Christmas – that Jesus came to Earth to save us from our sins. Sometimes we succeed; and a lot of times… well, we’ll just leave it at that. This year, we had a kind of “forced simplicity”, which made Christmas 2009 go down in Neely Team history as probably “the most unusual Christmas we’ve ever had!” 

The night of Christmas Eve, we were planning to follow our regular Christmas traditions the next day, and to just enjoy the time with each other. We had invited about ten other people to come have Christmas dinner with us, so we had gotten the house in ship shape,and by the time we went to bed that night, we were ready for a good night’s sleep, in preparation for what looked like would be a fairly busy day the next day. Yes, it was busy, but not quite in the way that we had planned!…

For me, it all started around 5:15 am, when I awoke to hear the excited whispers and restless movement of two of my sisters, in the bed next to mine. We have a rule that no one is allowed to get up before 6:00 on Christmas morning, to allow the sleepy ones (i.e. Dad, Mom, and a couple of us “stick-in-the-mud” older girls ) a teensy bit more time to sleep! So anyway, I was lying there, trying to tune out the noise of the girls’ excitement and go back to sleep, when I suddenly realized how dark it was. The power had gone out! I didn’t think much of it at first, because we have power outages all the time (especially when we have a windstorm like we had that night), and they usually don’t last very long. However, it was about 5:45 before I finally drifted off to sleep again, and my last thought was, Hmm. I wonder if the power will come back on in time…

Well, that altered a few people’s plans to get up at 6:00, as they were still lying in bed, wondering what would be the point of getting up in the dark, with no lights, no water, and no way to cook the breakfast we had planned! Finally, around 6:45, my siblings managed to wake me up enough to get out of bed, and  all nine of us headed downstairs to Mom and Dad’s room, to wake them up, too, in spite of the dark. After all, that’s what flashlights and candles are for, right?

That morning was actually very similar to other Christmas mornings, except that we got up later, couldn’t turn on our Christmas lights, couldn’t turn on ANY lights, except for our candles and flashlights, and had scrambled eggs and grits (which we cooked on our gas-powered stove) instead of baking the breakfast casserole that we usually have on special occasions. After it got to be light outside, Dad went out and hooked up the generator, which some friends just helped us hard-wire to the house back in October – just in time! The effect was wonderful! It wasn’t like having all of our regular electricity on, but it was good enough to run a couple things at a time, so that we took turns running things like the hot water (for showers and dishes), kitchen lights, refrigerators, and freezers. It’s amazing how attached we can become to our modern conveniences… and how much we miss them when they’re gone!!

After breakfast, we all gathered in the living room again to read the Christmas story and open gifts. Usually we just read the Christmas account from Luke 2, but this year we READ it, taking time between each verse to discuss the scenario and imagine what it would’ve been like to really be there. From Luke, we went back to Matthew and read the story about the wise men. Then we got into a discussion about “the star.” What was “the star” that the wise men followed? We had quite the discussion about that, and talked about several different possibilities; all in all a very interesting conversation! But more about that later…

We had to cancel our dinner plans with our friends because of the power outage. That was okay, because it gave us more family time; more time to relax and enjoy each other’s company. We altered our meal plan just a little, so that instead of baking the turkey, we grilled venison cube steaks and tenderloins – delicious!

We had another interesting twist to the day when shortly after dinner, the generator suddenly ran out of gas! We had called the power company, and they had said that they hoped to have the power back on by 11:00… PM… on SATURDAY night!!! So, with that in mind, Dad decided that we had to try to get some gas, so that our refrigerators would stay cold. At first, he was planning to go out by himself, but after some discussion, we decided to all load up and go. So, we enjoyed our time, spending Christmas in our 2nd (or maybe our real) home – the van! I have to mention here that usually we spend a lot of Christmas afternoon settled down in the living room, sitting in front of the Christmas tree. It’s so cozy and homey… but obviously that wasn’t going to work very well this time, so we loaded our two-foot-high tree into the van, plugged the lights into a power inverter, and enjoyed our little Christmas tree in our “home away from home” – how appropriate!

I realize that this is pretty long, and I don’t want to bore anyone, so I’ll skip to the end of the story… The power actually came back on around 7:00 pm, so that night we cozied down and watched “The Star of Bethlehem.” Let me take just a moment here and encourage anyone who has never seen that video to PLEASE do so!!! It is AMAZING!! Words fail me when I try to describe it, but it is an unbelievably fascinating tribute to the accuracy of the Bible and the sovereignty and perfection of God!!!!!! To know that the God of our universe would actually come to Earth, be born as a human baby, live a perfectly human life, and die an excruciating and horrible human death… just to save me, and all of us, from our sins and give us the opportunity to live with Him forever, is hard enough to fathom!!!! Then to see the design and perfection with which He had planned the universe to announce His coming, birth, and death… it was incredibly humbling!! It was a wonderful end to a truly wonderful Christmas!!!!!!!!!!