Greetings from Huntsville, Alabama!
New Teammates!
Nathan and Laura Thomas have decided to join us in going to Cambodia. Nathan and Laura were married on December 22, 2006 and are living in Searcy, Arkansas. Nathan plans to graduate from Harding with a Missions degree and Laura graduated in December with a degree in Education. They are very passionate about being a part of God's mission, and we are so glad to have them on our team. Please pray for them as they begin talking with churches and fundraising. They have recently experienced deaths in the family. Please pray for strength as they make up school and gp back to work, and also pray for their families during this time of loss.
Memphis Meetings
This month we made two trips to Memphis. The Wheelers, a young missionary couple who have been working in Cambodia for about 2 1/2 years, and their teammates the Hayes, who plan to join them this April, were having some team dynamics meetings in Memphis. We wanted to see them (Chris had never met the Wheelers) and get to know them better. We had a really good time getting to know both of them more and learning more about how we can serve the people of Cambodia as coworkers. We are so excited to have such excellent people working with us in Cambodia. God is truly blessing His people through them.
Central Missionaries
Allen and Julia Wright have been appointed to be our mentors/overseers while we are here in Huntsville. It has been a blessing to get to know them. They have been missionaries in Fiji for several years and are now living in Huntsville where Allen is Central's pulpit minister. Under their guidance, we are learning how to be more effective evangelists and gaining more insights about being missionaries in a different country. The Wrights are strongly encouraging us to gain experience evangelizing while we are here in Huntsville.
The Norville's are a missionary couple from Tomsk, Siberia. They have been working there for about 9 years. During the last two weeks or so of January, they have been here in Huntsville as they work their way around to see all of their supporters. It has been encouraging to meet and get to know Jim and LaVonne. They met with us several times, encouraged us and gave us advice. We have been very glad that they came through here and hope to stay in touch with them and keep learning from them.
Visiting With People
One of our primary responsibilities while we are here at Central is to get to know the church. We are having a lot of people over to our house, and we are going to their houses as well. It has been great to get to know people at this church. It makes us feel very involved and welcome.
Chris has started participating in a weekly men's prayer meeting every Friday morning. Casey has also attended several smaller ladies meetings and has started teaching English (using World English Institute materials) to a young Vietnamese woman here.
A special person we want to mention is a young man named Ilya from Almaty, Kazakhstan. He is here getting some surgeries to improve his standard of living. He has a cleft pallet and his eyes could not close right. He had surgery on his eyes but will have to stay longer for his mouth surgeries. It has been really neat to get to know him while he is here. He has come over to our house several times.
Sunrisers and Other LIFE Talks
Central has a bunch of small groups that meet every Sunday night that they call LIFE Talks. We have really tried to get involved in as many LIFE Talks as we can by rotating through them. There are a couple LIFE Talks that meet on different days of the week, too. There is the Sunrisers group which consists mostly of older members, two college groups, and a couple others that meet on different days. Chris had the privilege on the 30th of leading the discussion in one of these groups.
Focus of the Day
Since we have moved to Huntsville, we have experienced a real change of gear. We went from having every minute of the day planned to having to fill our own schedule. We have started a system that has been working pretty well for us so far. We assigned a "Focus of the Day" to each day of the week. Then, when that day comes around, we primarily set ourselves to doing whatever it is that that day's focus is. For example, Monday is our language day (and date night) where we study Khmer, Tuesday is our connections day where we try to keep in touch with people, Wednesday is our cleaning/study day, Thursday is our church day, and Friday is our Cambodia planning day in which we work on completing logistical stuff that needs to be done before we go to Cambodia.
Reese Wedding
On the first day of the year, David and Jenna (Harrington) Reese were married in Searcy, AR. We were very glad that we were able to attend their wedding, as it was such a wonderful time of fellowship and joy! Chris helped to film the wedding and really enjoyed it. The Reeses are a wonderful young couple who we have been truly blessed to know.
Maggie
Maggie's 6-month birthday was on the 28th of January. We can't believe she's that old already! It seems like the months are just flying by. She has also grown her first tooth. It's a sharp little tooth, and it sure is cute. We are so happy to have this wonderful little child. God has blessed us so much!
