Christmas Ippistle 2010

Dear family and friends,

It seems that there is more earthly anticipation and preparation before Christmas than at any other time of the year. And don’t you think we reflect God, when we make all of our preparations? Look at all the preparations that had to be made leading up to Jesus’ birth. God seemed to delight in those preparations. And God didn’t stop making preparations once Jesus was born; He’s still preparing, and we can see evidence of His work in how He brings people and opportunities into our day-to-day lives. God continues to prepare “good works in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:10), and with that in mind we know that the placement of certain people in our lives is no accident. We know that it is God that orchestrates all things. It is not by accident that we meet this person, who introduces us to that person, who invites us to this occasion where we meet still others…We want to be responsive to God’s leading and obedient within these opportunities.

Here in Budapest we have several opportunities that we are preparing for this coming week.
• A Christmas open house tomorrow afternoon at our flat for the English teachers at Trefort. From our oven there will be pig-in-a-blankets, banket, brownies, date bars, and decorated sugar cookies. Our colleagues will bring their own homemade goodies.
• A pizza party tomorrow night for other good friends that we have gotten to know here. We really look forward to celebrating the holidays with friends, using our gift of hospitality.
• A gift give away (socks, scarves, hot tea, sandwiches, personal hygiene items, and Christmas treats) to the homeless we interacted with last month at another blanket give away time. At this time of year so many people find shelter in the metro stations, providing us with obvious opportunities.
We don’t know the impact now, but we do know that God has prepared these opportunities in advance for us to do, and trust Him to bring blessing to others through this.

We are also excitedly preparing for our time back in Michigan over our two-week Christmas break. We will be together with our Indianapolis and Zeeland children and are excited to have Orsi and Zoli joining us for our “cabin time” at our condo. Our California families will not be coming “home” for Christmas but will be with each other at Nick and Julie’s home in Redlands. We will all open our gifts together via skype. We also look forward to spending time with Jack’s extended family in Michigan and Cindy’s extended family in Wheaton.

We pray that you may experience the love and peace of God in your lives, as you anticipate and prepare for your holiday celebrations and the coming year!

Jack and Cindy