“God loveth adverbs; and careth not how good, but how well.” I was really challenged today in reading Our Daily Bread devotional by this proverb that the Puritans used. Looking at Colossians 3:8-17 is a very good way for me to remember what is really important in life. How often we get caught up in the doing of things and not the spirit in which we do them. With our children we are making sure that they have a good attitude in the midst of their chores. I know that this goes beyond just the chores but touches every aspect of our life. We want everything we do to be done with a right heart and spirit. We desire to be pleasing the Lord and glorifying Him in everything we do. Our Christmas time has been one of enjoying the fellowship of our family and soaking up those calories. Whew I think we can slow down on them now! We were able to spend some time at a cabin on Mount Hood and play in the snow. What a treat. For the first time we had the privilege of having all but one of my family at our house for Christmas. I believe we had around 40 some people in our house for Christmas day. It seemed like our whole week between Christmas and New Years was filled with activity and now we are glad to have the kids back in school and things resume to normalcy. We have six more months of furlough and hope to head back to Papua New Guinea in July. Please be praying that the visa and work permit renewals will go smoothly this time around. New Tribes Mission has to renew all the visas and work permits of the missionaries who work in PNG every 3 years. That all comes due March 2010. Last time this took a lot longer than expected. Since this process is going on we are not allowed to enter PNG until we have those renewed travel permits in our hands. Lord willing it will be completed before we need to do any traveling. Thank you for remembering this in your prayers. We would also ask that you would pray for a believer in Lavangai tribe named Mandes. She is very sick now and looks to have a terminal illness. I have placed the update regarding her at the bottom of this email.