January 2010

2010
Still odd to me to be typing "2010" for things. "Spring 2010," "Hope 2010 is a great year....," "God has great things planned for 2010," etc, etc. It still seems like the digits, 2,0,1,0 should always end with the words, "... A Space Odyssey." I mean, shouldn't we be planning a vacation to one of Jupiter's moons or something? Nope - I live in Europe and still spend about $7 a gallon on gas. But, I digress.

January in NJ, Cali, and back home to Hungary
We really did have a nice time visiting family and friends over the break. Much needed, to be certain, but equally certain: it was not quite long enough. Thanks so much to everyone that prayed for the Foster family (extended version) this past month. Gramma Wilma's memorial was really nice. She was such an amazing lady - I always loved talking about her, and... she was one of the people I loved to boast about. She is already missed but we are thrilled for her.

Back home in Vajta, I had about... one day off before things kicked in. Intern retreat/orientation, two conferences (back-to-back), and then student arrivals and orientation (the conference center/Bible College trifecta: conference comes, conferences goes, the next conference comes that day, it leaves, and new students arrive that same day). Basically, we've kept our laundry-service guy fairly busy the last couple of weeks.

Spring Semester 2010
For me, Apologetics and Church History are on my plate for classes to teach. Full load of information based studies which are requiring me to really hit the books. Teaching is always so humbling for me. I just don't know as much as I'd like to. My rows of books just seem to beckon to me, and heckle me all at the same time.

Christi is doing more of a "home school" format with teaching Leah and Kara and we're excited about that. She does a great job with them and they seem to really enjoy it. Thankfully we have an extra room in the house as well as a really big kitchen table that has been provided for us. Mikayla is doing great with her A-B-C's and 1-2-3's and she'll no doubt be ahead of the curve soon.

The Bible College semester officially gets underway tomorrow morning (February 1st... FEBRUARY - how did that happen?). Orientation was this past weekend and it was busier than usual. One of the pastors here, Paul Lange, suffered a collapsed lung on Thursday afternoon. If you know Paul, the following statement won't surprise you: he drove himself to the hospital. He actually had the same thing happen about 10 years ago but wasn't sure this time if that was what had happened. It was, and they rushed him into surgery after a test or two. Please continue to pray for him; he came out of surgery fine, but he'll most likely be in the hospital for another few days.

We've also "enjoyed" (insert sarcasm there at your own discretion) quite a bit of snow to get things started. (This is the part where I normally grumble something under my breath about annoying cold white stuff falling from the sky.) Ironically, I think I'm getting used to cold weather. It just plain doesn't bother me like it used to. I guess I'm getting old.

Speaking of Getting Old...
Ian is 10 years old today. 10. Ten. The big 1-0. Double digits. Three years from teenagehood and eight years removed from adulthood. He is already such an amazing young man and we love him so much. I could not imagine having a better son than our T-man.

And of course...
... for those of you who don't know, this semester in Vajta, Hungary will be our last one. We've enjoyed the ride but will be moving on to England to assist at Calvary Chapel Mansfield with Pastor Bryce Heard and his wife Bethany in late-June/early-July. There are a couple of churches just waiting to happen in the surrounding areas and so we are excited to see what else God has in mind in the region. Please pray for us! Really, please do pray for us. We have A LOT of decisions to make on a number of fronts and there are a lot of things to just generally sort through.

(If you'd like, you could read last month's post and get an extra detail or two. All previous posts are just below this one.)

Tons of blessings and lots of love,

Jeremy & Christi and the kids (one of which, as mentioned, is now 10 years old)