New Year

We hope you’re all encouraged and enjoying the Lord’s blessings in this brand new year. Down here in southwest Texas we had a very intense cold spell (for here) right around Christmas time, with 3 nights in a row of temperatures down in the mid-teens. Galilee finished harvesting the last usable stuff from our winter garden the day the cold spell hit, so we’ve now entered the two-month period of the year when we don’t have a garden to tend. Actually our leeks and green onions did survive, and our carrots even sprouted again after their above-ground leaves were burned by the cold. And we’re thankful to have lots of canned and dehydrated goods from last year’s garden to use until the next one.

DJ and I (Jennifer) continue to work in our off-site ministries of IT/Network support and Culture & Language Acquisition development. I have most of the chapters of the Activities Book drafted and I’m now working on editing, adding in some new outline points and writing the explanations for those, etc. The Activities Book will explain each activity that language learners will use in their learning as they progress—everything from pointing at objects and learning to recognize words in a new language in the beginning to collecting and analyzing long recordings as they become more fluent.

The two of us were thankful to get to make a quick trip up to north Texas right before Christmas to see DJ’s parents, sister, and brother-in-law for a few days. We hadn’t seen any of them since we were all together for our niece’s wedding last May. The kids stayed here with my sister since Areli and Tyndale were still finishing up their last week of school before Christmas break.

Galilee saw her new neurologist in mid-December and was given a couple new pain medications to try as well as a new monthly/preventative one (she continues on her other daily meds for now too.) The neurologist was very hopeful that the new meds would cause improvement quickly, but unfortunately we haven’t seen that yet. Galilee’s next appointment is on the 24^th of this month. Please pray that we’ll be able to communicate clearly and find the way forward. We are also still working to get the letter of accommodation with all the needed specifics so she can be approved for extra time when she takes her GED (high school equivalency test.) We appreciate your prayers for that too.

Thank you so much for praying with and for us. God bless you all.