The New Year So Far

January has been filled with lots of activity for our family, so we thought we'd fill you in!

Rusty spent several days in Kansas City, MO, earlier this month interviewing with Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary's PhD program and "scouting out the land" for our family. We anticipate hearing the results of the application process this coming week (the beginning of February). We are hopeful that this may be an open door for Rusty to continue his education and continue training for missions and ministry. Our prayer is that he will be able to pastor alongside completing his doctorate, serving the church in America while we are here.

The Lord has also blessed Rusty with more work in the new year, something we are very thankful for! He is now working at the Beech Mtn. Town Hall in the Tax Administration office (!) in addition to his duties at the town rec. center. This brings him to a 40-hr./week status which has been wonderful for our family. Thank you for your prayers for him to find work during this transition time.

The girls continue to stay busy with AWANA and other church activities, and Sophie is still taking gymnastics in Boone. We spend a lot of time in the rec. center these days with the cold weather and snow, providing an outlet to avoid cabin fever on the mountain! Our new tactic is to take the tricycle and scooter down with us and let them ride in the gym--the closest thing we can get to the park right now! We've also taken the girls to their first "build to grow" time at Lowe's where they get to build their own children's craft--with some help, of course! (See pictures.)

I (SJ) am continuing to "grow" and have just completed 24 weeks with Baby Moses en utero. For those of you who haven't heard, it's a boy (!), and we are eagerly awaiting his arrival this May. While it continues to be a challenge to take care of the girls and carry a baby, we're all healthy and doing fine.

That's about all the news I can think of for now. Hope this helps keep some of you up-to-date with what's going on in our lives. I'm attaching some pictures of the girls from the new year as well, so you can see how they're growing. You may also notice our new blog format, which is an attempt at "starting afresh" for the new year and trying to entice myself to blog more! We'll see if it works. :) Until next time...

-SJ for the family