Dear Friends Once again we are glad to send you good wishes at Christmas time. Our lives have continued very much as before. John still attends U3A classes and also an exercise class. He is currently engaged in researching and writing an update of our church’s history in preparation for its 125th anniversary next year. Elizabeth keeps busy teaching French to a University of the Third Age class and attending French classes at the Alliance Française. She has recently been welcomed as an elder in our local United Reformed church, having had that position in other churches in the past. This year the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan celebrated the 150th anniversary of the coming of the first missionary. We had hoped to attend the celebrations at Easter, but John had a funny turn at the beginning of the year and we were advised that a long flight would not be wise. Instead we have had a number of Taiwanese visitors. We see various members of John’s family from time to time, particularly Helen and Colin, who live in Cambridge. David and Margie continue to visit parts of Africa every few months as joint coordinators of the Africa work of Worldwide Evangelisation for Christ. We visit Richard and Rachel in Derby when we can to see Richard performing with local amateur dramatic companies. We had a pleasant visit to the Lake District in September with some of the family. With their help we were able to visit many of John’s favourite spots in Eskdale and nearby. 
We didn’t pay our usual longer visit to Scotland this year, but we did manage two brief visits in the early summer: one for a family funeral and the other for a friend’s 70th birthday. In October we had the pleasure of visits from all four of Elizabeth’s siblings and their families. The occasion was the celebration of John’s 90th birthday, with 80 of us in our church halls – a very enjoyable party and the highlight of the autumn if not the year for us. With best wishes for Christmas and the coming year John and Elizabeth Whitehorn |