December Update

For those of you only interested in the pictures...keep scrolling down. :) For those of you interested in what's going on, below is a copy of what I sent out in the mail.




December Newsletter

Yikes! It’s December already!??? I really did have this great plan in my mind to have this newsletter done and delivered by the first of the month…which…um…was yesterday.  For those of you who have been greeting your mailman (sorry – “mailperson”) outside every morning anxiously awaiting the arrival of this newsletter…only to be sadly disappointed each and every time until now, I apologize (And by the way, if you’ve been meeting your mailman outside each and every day anxiously awaiting the arrival of this newsletter – you really need either some counseling or medication…probably both). For the rest of you…here’s what’s going on!

At Home
Outside of work, life is going really well. Though we haven’t been able to get outside as much as we would like to, we have really enjoyed the fact that when we do go outside, it’s almost always sunny. It’s amazing how different the weather is here compared to Portland. Though we definitely miss some of the folks back there – we’re loving our sunshine! When we do get the chance to get out, we have enjoyed going to either one of the two very large parks near where we live. They have sports fields, play grounds, and walking paths….Josiah enjoys it as well. He’s always happy when he’s outside.

For Thanksgiving we headed up to my parents place in McCall and enjoyed a few days off. It was absolutely gorgeous. There was about five inches of snow on the ground at their house and more up in the mountains. I finally got to use my 4X4!  We drove around the lake up there and had to put it into four wheel drive as there is a part of the road around the lake that the county doesn’t plow. I thought it was fun – not sure Jamie felt the same way! 

Unfortunately, a couple of days after we got home from McCall, Josiah came down with croup cough. Croup causes your airway to swell up and, because baby’s airways are still pretty small, Josiah has been coughing a lot and having some trouble breathing. We have some medicine for him now (which he enjoys spitting up) and are hoping it goes away quickly. Please be praying for that.

And finally…the big news of the month is…we should be homeowners once again by next week! We’ve been looking at houses foreverrrrrrr…I think we’ve been in every neighborhood in Boise....in fact, this is the fifth house we’ve put an offer on. Each time something came up (bad inspection report, seller was unreasonable, were out-bid, etc) and it didn’t work out…which Jamie and I are really grateful for because this is by far our favorite house and in our favorite neighborhood (only ½ miles to the nearest Chili’s!). It needs a little bit of work (carpet, fence, paint) because it was used as a rental before, but we’re really excited and can’t wait to actually get in it. Hopefully that will happen by Friday – early next week at the latest.

Financial update
So far, we have $2350 pledged each month! Thank you so much to those of you who are sacrificing your money to allow us to serve at The Pursuit, we are extremely grateful. We truly feel that this is where God wants us to be and that we are having a tangible impact on people’s lives here. In order to be fully funded, we need to raise approximately $500 more per month. In the mean time, we are working on small ways to cut down on our monthly need…for example, some friends of ours recently gave us an espresso machine (THANKS DEREK AND ALEXIS!!). We’ve learned to make our own drinks and now I’m twice as caffeinated for half the price! We also received a free Entertainment book from one of the guys who works at the church and so are using that to cut down on money spent on eating out and entertainment. We’re hoping to cover that $500 difference by both finding more financial partners for the next four months and cutting down on expenses. If you are interested in partnering with us financially please call and let me know and I’ll send you an email/letter with all of the information you’ll need. For those of you who are already doing so – thank you again. For those of you who are not – NO WORRIES. Some of you are already supporting worthy causes, some are struggling financially, and some of you probably just don’t want to (lets just call it as it is  )….and that’s no problem at all…I totally understand and hope you are enjoying the newsletter/pictures.

Prayer Updates
Please be praying for the following:
- That Josiah would get over his cough quickly.
- That Jamie and I would both start getting more and better sleep. It’s starting to wear us down a bit.
- That God would help me be more disciplined and organized.
- That God would protect our marriage and family.
- That God would use us to have a great impact on people’s lives here in the Boise area.

Well – that’s all folks. We’re doing really well. I hope all is well with each of you. I do have one small request from each of you though. Although I know that most of you are on the edges of your seat each month waiting for our newsletter to arrive, I have a sneaking suspicion that some of you don’t actually burst out in tears of joy at its arrival…in fact, there’s a slim possibility that some of you don’t even read it…slim but possible.  Here’s what I’d like to do. I’d like everyone to pick from one of the options below and either email or call me and let me know what they’d like.

A. Continue receiving a hard copy in the mail each month.
B. Receive an email with a link to the blog at the beginning of each month when newsletter has been posted on the blog.
C. Don’t email or call me because it really doesn’t matter to you if you receive the newsletter or not – translation – you don’t love us…don’t worry, we won’t be hurt…really…sniff sniff. (Really – if you don’t really care if you get the newsletter or not, no worries – I don’t read other people’s newsletters. )

Any of those is fine with me; I just would like to narrow down who received hard copies to only those who really would like them.

Muchos Gracias!

Robbie, Jamie, and Josiah