Happy New Year

Happy New Year to family and friends!  I want to thank you all for your love, support, and prayers this past year; we could not have made it through the year without you!  So many of you have called or emailed or sent us wonderful cards of encouragement.  Your thoughtfulness has been deeply appreciated and cherished.
It was hard for us to leave California in July.  Our friends there will always have a special place in our hearts.  I can't image walking through the past three years without them.  God put all our California friends into our lives to show us how much He loves us.

This year has also been good for the renewal of old friendships.  I took a trip out to New Jersey for the funeral of a dear old friend, Stan Cole.  I had promised him that I would always speak at his funeral, and a mutual friend treated me to the trip.  It was great to see friends again, to renew old acquaintances and to make new ones.  It was fun to see the area in which Linda and I lived the first three years of our marriage while we did our graduate studies, and where Elisabeth was eventually born after we returned from Scotland.  It is wonderful to be in contact once again with those friends.

This past fall, we were able to finally sell both our houses within two weeks of each other.  Even though we don't have a house in Michigan, we still hope to get back there now and again.  We plan to be there in July of the New Year for my parents 50th wedding anniversary.  We also hope to see family in Hudsonville and friends at Third Reformed Church of Kalamazoo (now CenterPoint Church).

God has truly blessed us by leading us to a fantastic church, New Hope Community Church, in Gilbert, AZ.  As Joshua says, "these people are awesome!"  God has blessed the church with a wonderful staff and some phenomenal leaders.   We have been slowly growing with twenty-two people joining in November and our most attended service was this past week, the Sunday after Christmas, with almost three hundred in worship (in most churches the Sunday after Christmas is the least attended service of the year).  In the New Year we hope to begin the process of planting churches.

Many of you have been asking about Ben Jarvis, the son of my associate pastor.  Ben was diagnosed with Leukemia last November.  He is only six years old.  However, he has responded quickly to treatments and so he is doing really well.  We spent New Year's Eve with the Jarvis family and Ben played the Wii game until 1:00am in the morning.  He spent the entire evening jumping around with the other kids having a great time.  If you would like to follow his progress, please follow this link:  http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/benjaminjarvis.  Ben's parents, Gary and Cindy, would appreciate your prayers.

Thank you all for being there for us when we needed you most.  You are all great friends.  May God bless you in the new year!