New Year News

Thank you so much for your prayers for us over the past few months.  We are so thankful for the Lord’s protection in our travels as we made 3 trips this past fall—2 to our former island of ministry and one for just me (Jennifer) to another southeast Asian country to attend culture and language consultant meetings.  We enjoyed the fellowship in 2 different Hobongan villages during our October trip to our former ministry location.  I also very much enjoyed and benefited from the consultant meetings I attended in November.  It was good to hear what other language and culture consultants are doing around the world, how their study programs work, and what they’ve found most helpful.
DJ took care of the kids and managed their schedules in addition to his work schedule for a week and a half while I was out of the country.  It was by far the longest time I have spent away from DJ and the kids, so we all missed each other a lot.  I had been sick with a stomach virus that didn’t want to let go for a couple weeks before my November trip, and near the end of the trip I came down with another stomach flu which made the return trip miserable and took another couple weeks to recover from once I was home.  We’re thankful that we are all healthy right now, and we’d appreciate prayers for that to continue.

During the first half of December we worked very hard so that we could take some time off to spend with the kids during their Christmas break.  We gave stage 1 evaluations to two couples and got them started into their stage 2 studies.  Both of these families have newborns who arrived right about the time that their parents finished up stage 1.  We are so proud of their hard work and good progress even with the adjustments to their newest family members (third child for each family).  And it’s kind of nice to get to hold a new baby in addition to giving language advice when I visit them.

We enjoyed our Christmas break time with Areli, Galilee, and Tyndale.  We still had church and neighborhood activities, but we were also able to spend quite a bit of time together as a family.  This was our first Christmas where we didn’t have to travel since we moved here 3 ½ years ago.  The kids went back to school on Jan. 4 for their second semesters of 6^th grade (the girls) and 3^rd grade (Tyndale.)  So far they are all having their best school year yet.  Praise the Lord!

Please pray with us that the Lord would help us to expand our current team of prayer and financial support partners.  If you know of anyone else who would like to receive our e-mail updates (no obligation at all—just to learn about our ministry) or connect with us on facebook or through our blog, please feel free to send along e-mail addresses and/or facebook contacts.

Thank you so much for your prayers, support, and encouragement for all the years that we’ve been serving in Asia.