Greetings from Kenya

The following message from loyal a reader living in Kenya is one of many special greetings that SooToday.com will be publishing over the holidays.

If you're a former Sault resident now living 200 or more kilometres away, SooToday.com would be delighted to post your 800-word-or-less message.

It's absolutely free, but the deadline is January 1.

For details, click here.

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It is that time of the year once more and once again I am away from home.

This year I am not out trekking in the Himalayas with my dear friend Colleen.

I am in East Africa where I am working for the UN in Nairobi Kenya, as part of the Organized Drug and Crime team.

I will be spending Christmas day with an orphanage, located in the slums of Nairobi, to which I volunteer my spare time.

Through the help of many colleagues from the UN and my family, we are giving the 56 children who call this orphanage home a Christmas.

To many it will be their first and I am looking forward to being a part of it.

I may not be home with my family and friends who I will always think of over the holidays where ever I am, but I do feel I am contributing towards making a difference and I am grateful that they understand and support me.

To everyone in the Soo who reads my blog, keeps me posted on the news, updates me on the hockey, writes, emails, posts, calls or texts, please never fail to acknowledge nor forget how much your contact, updates and stories mean.

The memories they in light and the stories they tell mean more than one might easily acknowledge.

You can never overestimate how much such contact means and says to me but also to those I am able to pass along the stories to, who are equally interested in a distant and unique part of the world.

I do miss being home along the Great Lakes, the surrounding mountains, the ice fishing, the snowmobiling, the snowboarding, Searchmont, the snow and venturing across the river.

However, most of all I miss my parents, my sisters, my new niece Chloe who I will not meet before her first Christmas, my older niece Olivia whose first two Christmases I have missed, my relatives, friends and second families.

I miss the atmosphere spending time with such people creates over the break and the feeling you get with being around those who know and love you.

I would like to wish all of the above and everyone in the Soo, a Merry Christmas.

I hope that no matter how we spend our holidays and wherever we might be that we can all fully appreciate that those we love will be thinking of us, even in their absence.

I hope the holiday spirit and excitement is as it has always been in the Soo and that everyone’s New Years is just as they hope it to be.

Merry Christmas from Kenya, where your daughter, sister (in law), aunt, cousin, niece, friend or fellow Sooite will be thinking of the Soo and all of those who make it feel like home over the holidays.

All my best,

Deanna Paolucci

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Look who else wrote to us this year

Stephanie-Chantal misses lots about both Saults 

Pat and Howard grateful they dodged tornado in 2011

Taylor sure to have a green Christmas this year

Greetings from frozen Calgary