Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

We hope you all enjoyed a wonderful time of celebrating Christ's birth and are looking forward to a new year full of God's graces. We enjoyed spending Christmas with Nathan's family here at our home, and we also got to celebrate Levi's 2nd birthday on Christmas day.

We learned at the beginning of December that Spain was indeed processing our visas as they requested another document from us, which we furnished, and everything is now back in the hands of those in Madrid. It is quite possible that we'll get Nathan's visa in the next few weeks. If so, Julie's and the kids' visas should arrive about a month later. We are hopeful that we could leave at the end of February (at the earliest) or in March.

We have been grateful to have a few more people choose to join us in financial support, so now we are just short of our monthly goal by $700. We are confident that God will provide all that we need in His own timing, and we ask you to continue to pray that God will lay it on people's hearts to support us as we have the potential of moving in the next 2 months. If you would like to support us, please reply to this e-mail.

People have been asking us a lot lately how we feel about our upcoming move. It's been hard to verbalize, but last week an illustration came to mind. We feel like we're in a box car of a fast-moving train. On a daily basis, we move about our box car (home, church, work, kids) doing the daily tasks- so things seem "normal." But in reality, the train is moving forward at a rapid pace. Every once in awhile, we stick our heads out the window and get so excited (and yes, nervous) for what lies ahead. We are very anxious to join the Belches and Albrechts in what God is doing in Tenerife.

Below, you'll find pictured two very good reasons to send us to Tenerife :-) as well as a picture of our kids before our church's Christmas service.



2 comments:

Dana said...

Such a cute picture! I love Eliana's dress too. Don't you love dressing up little girls?!

Anonymous said...

Julie,

My name is Kevin Stophel. I got to know Nathan through the Woodland Park Baptist youth group when he was a teenager. I was excited to recently get an update on him from his parents and to see that the Lord has blessed him with a lovely family and that he is pursuing a seminary degree and that you all are planning on leaving for the mission field. Wonderful news!!!

Would like to catch up with him and also discuss your support needs. It may be that I can help, at least in part. Possibly I can connect with some past youth leaders and determine if they have the desire and ability to materially support your family's effort as well.

As you have time, please let Nathan know I touched base and ask him to contact me at elohim003@comcast.net or give me a call on my cell at 423.298.3780 or at my office at 866.575.3584.

You have a lovely family and I am excited for you and your family.

Kevin