What does your Thanksgiving Look Like?

Good Evening,

 

            While, we’re a day ahead of most of you, it’s officially the evening of Thursday the 23^rd here, and in a few hours most of you will be waking up to Thanksgiving Day, a day filled with big fat newspapers loaded with the first big sales of the seaon, the smells of turkey and the all the inevitable side dishes, long afternoon naps, and great times with your family and friends. The weather, for most of you, is cool and fall-like and quite a few of you will spend the next day decorating your house for Christmas (though if your name is Jonny J. your house has been decorated since Labor day J)

             Ok, so it doesn’t sound like we miss all that does it? …Maybe a little bit, maybe a lot, but we’re confident that the Lord has brought us here to Indonesia and that means that we get to create new traditions and things that remind us of our traditions at home. So, in that spirit we’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving with a turkey dinner with a group of mostly Canadian friends and co-workers here. Like I said, we have to make new traditions here…

            We’ve got plenty of Christmas music, pictures of snowy landscapes, and even a decent Christmas tree. We’ll be fine, but when you are celebrating later on today maybe pray that we would continue to trust the Lord in an environment that still feels pretty foreign at times and at a time when we make some of the best memories back home.

             We’re 1 day into starting our 6^th unit of language study, which means that we have only 2 more units to go, including this one. Boy do we need your prayers, we have only 8 weeks of formal language study left and we want to make the most of it. We’re excited though at the progress that we’ve made. Last weekend we hosted the neighborhood men’s meeting, which was a a good gesture for us to make at learning the culture of our host country, but it was only possible because of the progress that God has enabled us to make in this language.

             So language is going well, how about the rest of our lives?

             Jack is sleeping on a toddler bed which is a big graduation for him. His little vocabulary is developing and in his mind it’s much broader than we can possbily understand J. We love to listen to him chatter. He’s growing quickly and we very much do not have a baby on our hands anymore. He needs much shepherding from us though and is learning, often times the hard way, that he needs to obey Daddy and Mama. Which means that Daddy and Mama need much patience and enablement to be consistent in both hands on love and discipline. It’s easy to lose patience with him, but I’m confident that the Lord has provided the Holy Spirit to produce that patience in us when we live trusting Him to do that.

             Bethany is doing well. We still don’t know the gender of the baby and are hoping for a nice Christmas gift to ourselves by finding out next month. In the mean time, Bethany is growing but slower than the first time, to her happiness. She’s in the process of organizing a ladies retreat later in December which is keeping her event-planner side happily occupied! She’s doing well with langauge and has significantly improved due to working with a tutor two days a week.

             I (Joel) am also doing well, though I’m in the midst of a cold/flu, must be the chilly fall weather here…  I’m doing well and for the most part, I’ve been enjoying language study and the gradual process of becoming bi-lingual. I’m looking forward to creating new holiday traditions here in Indonesia and am happy to say that I’ve procured a nice little bag of my favorite coffee roaster’s Christmas Blend! You still have to be civilized you know…

             Our plans are continually coming together for the plan of next year to come home for a short time. We just got quotes for airfare and we’re continuing to look into the rest of the plans that we need to see finished. Please be praying with us for the details of this trip to come together in a way that grows us and glorifies the Lord. We’re often reminded of the neccessity for us to come home for this time period as we continue to hear of Bethany’s father’s health. We’re really trusting the Lord to provide us with good time with her Dad and Mom at a time when they could really use our encouragement.

             We know that the timing of this trip is odd and seemingly inconvenient but we’re convinced that it’s the Lords will for that time period. And in the end, after 6 months home, we’ll actually be able to arrive in Papua quicker than we had originally thought and that means that we’ll be able to start helping our overloaded team-mates there with all the work that needs to be done.

             Well, I should sign off. We hope your Thanksgiving Day is awesome! Enjoy all that you have, be thankful for it, and remember that God has blessed us with so much both physical and more so Spiritually, in Christ our life!

 

            Joel for the Potter 3