Saturday, December 14

We woke up Saturday morning to a heavy snow in Burlington.

We were glad that our motel was only a few blocks from the church where the service would be held.

One time I looked out, I enjoyed watching these two dogs running and jumping in the snow.

A short time later there were two dogs in the next yard.

Before long a third one joined them.

We saw a winter wonderland outside our window each time we checked on the weather.

By 10:00 we left for the memorial service, following our trusty GPS to the front door of Compass Point Bible Church.

This photo of Audrey and Murray is from my personal file, and was probably taken about the time they began serving with TFC’s Overseas Ministry.

This more recent photo is one I took when we enjoyed a meal with them and a few other TFC friends.

Because of distance, many TFC staff people could not be there, so several letters were read during the celebration of her life.

In his letter, Scott, TFC President and CEO said, it is difficult to think of Audrey without Murray as they were a team when developing ministry to the truckers in Russia and Africa. That was reiterated several more times as selected people shared memories of Audrey’s life.

There were three letters “From Russia With Love” – all mentioning Audrey’s great skill in making them feel loved. Left to right: Luba and Chaplain Vladimir, Chaplain Alexander and Tanya, and Chaplain Peter.

Because Chaplain Peter’s wife, Lydia, was not on the previous photo, I am including one I took at a staff conference several years ago.

There was also a kind letter from Chaplain David from Zambia, Africa. (This photo is from when we met him at the chapel dedication in East St. Louis when he was in the states for training.)

After the memorial service, there was a nice reception in the church’s foyer.

It was wonderful to meet Murray and Audrey’s family and friends as well as Canadian TFC friends, staff, and board members that we hadn’t seen for a while.

After the service, the reception, and a bit of visiting, most people were rather anxious to get back on the road because it continued to snow and some of our friends came from more than an hour away.

We went back to our motel room where I blogged and Cerwin read my book “40 Chances” by Howard Buffet.

Had it not been snowing we would have gone out for supper or ordered delivery from a nearby restaurant.

Because we didn’t feel like venturing out in the snow, it didn’t seem thoughtful to make a restaurant deliveryman risk the roads to please us, so we ate some things we had in the room – banana, orange juice, decaf coffee, and got a few things from the motel snack machine. 🙂

I was glad the new Sound of Music was on TV. That occupied most of my evening while I worked on the easy background stitching of my counted cross stitch piece. Cerwin isn’t as thrilled about Sound of Music, so checked out my blog and our friends’ Facebook pages.

We went to sleep hoping that the roads would be clear by morning so we could head home.