European Christmas

Well almost……We had our 1st Christmas dinner on Christmas eve with our neighbors the Ellis, Moritz and Simons families. Then we had our 2nd Christmas dinner with our friends Robert and Rosemarie (British) and Wayne and Yola (she is Polish). The 1st was a traditional American meal but the 2nd was a traditional English meal. We started the 2nd with a course of traditional Polish soups, beet soup and mushroom soup. Then the rest was all British. Some was not much different than our American dishes but some was different. After the meal we played games and did a white elephant gift exchange and watched the Nativity movie. It was a good time with good friends.

We pray you have a wonderful new year, experiencing God’s grace throughout 2010.

Renaissance and bell ringing

Meghan spent part of her Saturday ringing the bell for the Salvation Army in front of Wal-Mart, as part of the key club at school. She was so excited and could hardly wait for this weekend.

The Choir at school has been preparing for the renaissance feast and this weekend was the big production. Matthew is in the back row as part of the royal courtiers. They did great and sounded incredible.

Things have been hectic lately with the holidays, partnership development and preparing for our departure in 6 months. We will be mailing out Christmas cards and newsletters this week, so be watching for them. If you don’t receive them but wish to, please contact us and let us know.

Christmas

Thanksgiving

We had a great time in Michigan for Thanksgiving with our friends Pete and Peggy. Great food, great company and the weather was great, although the kids would have preferred some snow. We went to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn on Friday and really enjoyed seeing all the exhibits.

Half Marathon

On November 1st Christine ran her first half marathon (13 miles). She came in at 2 hours 1 minute. She was 23rd out of 96 in her age group and 301st out of 898 total. She did great and she really enjoyed it. She started running about a year and a half ago and after running a 5k (3 miles) and a 10k (6 miles) she decided to start training for a half marathon. Below are some pictures taken by a professional sport photography company Action Sports Images.

The last picture is of Christine just after crossing the finish line. Matt was supposed to spend the 2 hours window shopping inside Bass Pro but they didn’t open the store until 9 am and by then Christine had finished the race. We did walk around in the store later though.

What’s next?

Now that we have officially completed our training with NTM. We will spend the next 8 months preparing for our departure. We need to be in PNG by July so that the kids can start school. Here are some of the things we will need to be doing to prepare.

• Partnership development (raising support)
• purchasing airline tickets
• purchasing needed supplies for the field
• arranging shipping of our supplies to the field
• completing legal paperwork here
• completing legal paperwork for the field
• storing our belongings
• passports for Matthew and Meghan
• arranging for people here to take care of our personal and legal business while we are overseas
• vaccinations

Our plan at this point is to stay here in Missouri and keep the kids in school while we travel on the weekends sharing our ministry with anyone and everyone who is interested in hearing about the work God is doing as He builds His church.