This Advent of 2024, I dedicate my remarks & this entire Christmas Card to my sweet daddy, Dino Anthony Compare. It was a true blessing to help care for him in his final years before losing him in April. Despite this deep sadness, our year still held many joys: Edisto & Lake Murray among them.
Leia (22) is in the final stretch at UNC Wilmington with her heart set on medical or pharmacy school. Harvest (24) continues to study film & currently has a job in film editing. Marriage is in the near future, as the preliminary planning commences. So exciting!**Annie (18) attends Henderson County Early College HS as an upperclassman, loves biology, just voted for the first time, & adores her time at the pottery studio. Pottery is now her favorite art medium for which she has an internship at the Transylvania Arts Council. She was sad to lose her cat Miku this fall, but still has our cat, Bello, & our bunny, Mario.**Both Brian & I enjoy our jobs & our work friends more than ever. Brian got a nice promotion into management at Exela & personal shopping keeps me fit & happy. With our home poised high atop Foggy Mountain, we stayed safe from Hurricane Helene, suffering only 1 week without power, 3 weeks without internet, downed trees & a destroyed shed (which is more than I can say for our beloved Asheville). Hurricane Helene changed the literal geography of Western North Carolina through its devastating floods.**Brian also got to realize a childhood dream by sitting in the General Lee, the car from The Dukes of Hazzard, the current TV show we're watching. We LOVE the 70’s nostalgia of watching this show, which, more than anything else, has helped me understand the blood-bond of Southern families.**One special accomplishment that Shana & I share is being muti-season extras on The Chosen, this year filming Season 5 for a week in Utah on the Jerusalem set. We got to see Jonathan Roumie as Jesus preach, flip the tables of the moneychangers, & yell at the Pharisees (which you can see when it comes out in the spring of 2025). Despite all of the chaos & division in our country, I find a ray of hope in the fact that The Chosen, a TV show about Jesus & the largest crowd-funded project in history, is a popular TV show in the world today.
So, I pray for our country, the world, & for you, my dear friends, during this beautiful Christmas season: the focus of which is the birth of Christ, the Savior of the world. May God bless you this holiday season and may the Holy Spirit fill you with His love.
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