Last night as we sat down as a family and
had a time of devotions, I was struck by how much God has blessed us this past
year. Often we are too busy to just sit down and ponder all that God has done
for us. We have a house that we now own (or will when we are done paying the
bank for it), two cars, two cats, four dogs, seven chickens, and most of all
four healthy kids. During our prayer time it was a joy to hear the kids pray
about what they were thankful for and the desired they had for the new year. It
was funny to hear Matthew pray for snow. That is one request that I am pretty
sure will not be coming true while we are in Honduras (at least we hope not).
Jordan thanked God for all of the things that he had given us and it was quite
a list, but it did my heart good to hear him as God to help us to reach many
new people in the year to come.
Living on the
mission field we miss our friends and families that we have left behind, but it
is such a joy to gain "family" here. Recently, I got a call from a
young girl, Michelle, who has been coming to our church since August. She came
with her sister and got saved. While visiting Karen and Nixon, her mom and
"stepdad", they also got saved. Michelle had to go and stay with her
dad in another town for Christmas and the New Year. Every day when she calls
her mom, she asks about Hermana (Sister) Cassy and Audrey. On Sunday, she was
finally allowed to call her mom when she was at church and got to talk to me.
She was so excited to tell me that she would be home for church on Wednesday
night. Her mother, Karen, is a blessing too. We are praying that she will get
married soon. She will help in any way that I will let her. It is such a joy to
see someone with such a desire for the Lord. Even though she lives quite a ways
from church (too far to walk), she is always waiting on us as we drive by to
pick her up for church. We NEVER have to wait on her. We will be
beginning discipleship with her soon.
This last year we
began some new family traditions. On Christmas Eve, the kids opened a gift that
had new pajamas, fuzzy socks, and Christmas cups for each of them. There was
also a Christmas movie in the box. We had them put on their jammies and we all
sat down and watched the new Christmas movie. After that we watched It's a
Wonderful Life. We put out a plate of banana bread, cookies, and peanut butter
fudge. We all ate what we wanted and enjoyed the time together. Matthew is the
only one who didn't make it. He fell asleep halfway through It's a Wonderful
Life. We decided that this would be a fun way to end the year too.
Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. Matthew really wanted to watch
Wall-E so we decided that he would watch that while all the older ones played
Train Dominoes. We didn't get done playing until after 1:00 am. While we didn't
watch movies and eat snacks, we had a lot of fun. Julie (the young lady who is
staying with us for a few weeks), Audrey, Jason, and I ended the year playing
games and laughing a lot while the boys watched Thomas the Train and Flipper.
What a blessing to be able to have fun and make memories. I am pretty sure that
Train Dominoes is going to become a New Year's tradition in the Tate house.
