We hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas celebration and a Happy New Year to you also!

We enjoyed a laid back Christmas brunch with two other missionary families and then had a quiet evening at home playing games with a gal from church. We also had our annual Boxing Day BBQ with the missionaries we work with. Dan had a horrible sore throat for a couple days (including Christmas!) but we are thankful it cleared up in time since the two of us led worship this morning for our teammate Paul’s church plant. It is an Anglican church so it was a little more reserved than we are used to, but it was an interesting change of pace.

Our church is sending approximately 20 young people on a mission trip this week to a small little town on the ocean called Kenton on Sea. Kenton is a party town and during the week between Christmas and New Year, approximately 8,000 young people pitch tents on the beach, listen to their favorite live rock bands, they drink WAY too much, they sleep around, and do drugs. Our church has a free coffee bar that is open all night to help kids sober up, there is a medic who helps with the obvious side effects of drinking too much, they watch out for the gals who might get taken advantage of and they have a lot of fun trying to engage people in conversations about God. They were a huge blessing to the community last year and saw a lot of people give their lives to Christ. Please pray that God will work powerfully in and through the lives of those who go, that they will have many opportunities to share the love of Christ and that many people will respond and give their lives to Christ.

One of the gals who came on our first short term team is returning to Africa to teach school in Bulembu, Swaziland for 1 year. We love Jasmine and are excited she is coming back! It just proves to us the value of short term teams since many who come for a short time end up coming back to commit for longer seasons! She lands on the 2^nd, we are hosting a “welcome back” BBQ for her on the 3^rd and then we are driving her to the Swazi school on the 4^th. We will likely end up back at the Chomba’s home for an extra day or two and Dan can do a little more work on the building we are finishing for the orphan guys who live with Lewis and Maggie. We are looking forward to more time with this wonderful family!

Sorry it has been so long since I've written here. To resolve the picture issue I had to ditch internet explorer and start all over with a new search engine. Switching things around on my technology isn't my favorite, but at least now you can see pictures again. yeah! I haven't been paying much attention to my blog since I have been enjoying facebook so much! I'll post pictures of Miesha's birthday party soon. Smiles, Janell