It's Christmas Eve!

To join in the festive fun, here is a photo of our house at night and our tree at night.  (Yes, those are open windows!  It's Florida!)

More often than not, we find all 3 cats curled up under the tree.  They clearly like Christmas too!

A real Snoopy doghouse

First, we are really happy to have Devon home from CIU for Christmas!  He was here for a day before he was off to play ultimate frisbee.  He got a job with the same company he'd worked for during the summer, applying special coatings to garage floors, etc.  He is staying with his grandparents in Naples for the time being.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During that day that he was here, he was able to help us with a small project.   We found a doghouse on Craig's list and he helped us move it. 

  Yes, it is a real live "Snoopy" doghouse, complete with a shingled roof!  It is so solidly built and heavy that we joked that once it is in place, a hurricane won't blow it away.

Of course there is an ongoing debate as to whether or not Duke will use it, but it sure looks great in the backyard! 

Dan unpacked his suitcase

After the Board meetings Dan spent a week in Texas.  He was able to present the Sister Church Program to churches in Waco and Fredricksberg.  He also had an evening with 2 current Sister Churches in Austin.  RMI's Director of Development, Kent Commons, was with Dan on part of this trip.  It was a good trip.  Pray for these 2 new contacts.  The pastors were very interested in the uniqueness and depth of the program - and the fact that it could minister not only to Haitian brothers and sisters but to their own people.  We'd love to have them join the Sister Church Program!

And now he has unpacked his suitcases for a few weeks.  It's great to have him home!  In the last 3 weeks we've had Thanksgiving, a garage sale, lots of volleyball, the Board meetings, this trip to Texas, other RMI meetings -- a lot of stuff crammed into that time, so we are looking forward to having a Christmas break.  We're behind in decorating for the holidays, cooking backing and shopping!

Board Meetings

What would we do without our Board members?  Dec. 4 & 5 was RMI's semi-annual board meetings.  We all had worked very hard to get reports ready, especially Rob.  He recently changed RMI's accounting system over to QuickBooks.  This meant quite a few more reports for the board.  But this was a good thing!  They had wanted these new reports.

We met in a conference room at our church, which worked great since it was close to the office, our home and the hotel where some of the members stayed.  They even supplied our snacks and lunch.

We have great guys on the board.  They are very involved and the knowledge they bring is so helpful to us.  The meetings went very well.  It's very encouraging to look back at the past 6 months and see how God has worked and the progress that has been made.  And it's exciting and challenging to look ahead at the things in front of us.  The economy has affected RMI and we do have challenging times before us.  Pray for us as we continue to serve our Lord through RMI!  

At least they left some turkey

Devon and 2 missionary kid buddies, Kyle and Andrew Vrooman left Titusville, FL about 6 a.m. and got to our house at 9:30 for a big breakfast.  I'd been up very early baking, baking and then doing some more baking.  There was turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes with marshmellows on top, cranberry sauce, "pink stuff", scallop potatoes, pumpkin pies and chocolate cake.  The cake was Dawn's request because it was Thanksgiving AND we were celebrating her 18th birthday (finally). 

 

Herb, Shirley, Alyssia (Dave & Rosie's daughter), Doug, Cindy and their 2 kids made 13 people.  As we were serving up the food, David, Jr. (Dave's oldest son), showed up!  He'd driven over from Miami unannounced, but very welcome!  Then as we were just about finished, Caleb (Dave's youngest son) and his wife called asking if there was any food left and if they could come over.  That made 16 people.  There was plenty of food. 

The house was full to overflowing.  I told Dan at the end of the day that people just trickled in then trickled out all day long.  It was interesting - when we went outside, we looked up and down the street and saw that most of the homes on our block had multiple cars out front like our home.  There must have been a lot of turkey being eaten and a lot of family time going on!

Devon stayed for the weekend.  We didn't see much of him since he kept really busy.  He and Dawn helped us out on the Saturday after Thanksgiving when we had a garage sale.  Once we got things going, they went down to Naples to fish and hang out.  It was a tiring day, but we got rid of a lot stuff.  Now we can actually walk in the garage.

Sunday Dawn had club volleyball tryouts (God has made it possible for her to do club volleyball again!) - she made the team.  Devon left to go back to CIU Sunday as well.

What a long, full weekend!  But at least they left us some turkey!