Happy New Year from Audrey, Daryl and Sarah Malena

 In the past many years we have been erratic about sending Christmas cards and letters.  Receiving the cards and letters from our friends and family makes us realize the importance of updating everyone once a year, so we decided it was time to get in touch again.

 Daryl and Audrey continue to share the same office address at 10838 Old Mill Road in Omaha.  Audrey’s Marriage and Family Therapy practice includes a significant number of folks that see her for grief related therapy.  She also does mediation with church congregations, which is something like family therapy.  Daryl’s Periodontics practice includes skin grafts, bone grafts and an increasing number of dental implants.  He also spends some time at the dental colleges at Lincoln and Creighton, and at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

 Sarah received a Master’s degree in History from the University of California in San Diego and now has “dissertation only” status on her PhD. She is researching the role of trade in Old Testament times. Her friend, Donald Wallace, is in the final stages on his dissertation and is lecturing at UCSD. Living in the fabulous Southern California climate of La Jolla is oddly balanced by the 2-3 months Sarah occasionally spends living in a tent south of the Dead Sea in Jordan. Next summer she will be an area supervisor overseeing the excavation of an Iron Age cemetery at a site in the land that the Bible calls Edom. The project has been reported in National Geographic and made the LA Times last year.

 Everyone asks about her safety during her trips to the Middle East. Yes, her parents pay close attention to CNN and the State Department reports when she is there, but she has lived in Jerusalem and Jordan for significant periods of time. This is an important part of what she does, and she is cautious and stays in touch. On her last trip we were able to enjoy cell phone communication on a regular basis—much better than earlier times when even emails were sometimes weeks apart.

We are all in good health and enjoying life. Of course, December and Christmas are different for us. It has been nine years since Rachel died on December 26, 1994. You may recall that her birthday is on the 12^th, she entered the med center for the transplant on December 30^th in 1993 and she re-entered for the last time on December 12 in 1994. We miss her, but we have transformed Christmas to include her genuine love for the season along with our memories of her.  This year we repeated our old tradition of taking pies to the nursing stations at the transplant center. We also of made peppernuts and hoska, ate lasagna on Christmas Eve and prime rib on Christmas, and traveled to the farm for Christmas with Grandma and the whole family.

We wish all of you a very happy holiday season.  
You can email us at docoma@cox.net.