Merry Christmas!

Brothers, Sisters, Family, and Friends, it has been a long time since my last letter, even still, you all have been near to our hearts. 2006 is coming to a close and I have one question for you...Are you closer to God than when the year started? I pray that you are and that you are able to look back on 2006 and see where God has been with each of you, working along side of you, comforting you, providing for you, guiding you, and teaching you lessons along the way to mature you and strengthen you as you walk through each day. I know that God certainly has done each of those things in our lives this year.

God has been so good to us and this letter serves as a way to share our joy of another year living in His light and glory with you. As all of you know, God blessed us with Caleb Isaac on 9 December 2005. Caleb has brought a smile so bright to our hearts. The past year has been full of smiles, laughter, and discoveries as well as some sleepless nights and fussiness and colds. All in all, we are more than blessed. Caleb has one of the sweetest, most peaceful spirits we have met. We are honored that God has chosen us as his parents. We strive each day to raise him in an environment filled with the faith, hope, and love that God has given us. We attempt to be intentional in every decision we make regarding his welfare...considering the results of our decisions. Please pray for us that God would continually guide us and help us with our shortcomings so that we may be Godly parents.

As you all know, we decided to leave our service in the Army to follow God's leading to Clarksville, TN to help plant a church in inner city Clarksville. I have been serving on the Board of Directors for Radical Mission. Radical Mission is a non-profit organization that we have created to "look for creative ways to bring people together - across economic, racial and social boundaries - to be the hands and feet of Jesus in this world." I believe that Radical Mission is the vehicle which God is using to create relationships with those in Clarksville we want to reach and for whom we want to plant a church. Here are some of the ways we do that: Micro-lending program, literacy program, budgeting classes, breakfast for the homeless, celebrate recovery, mission trips, food pantry, clothing closet, prison ministry, emergency assistance, employment assistance, and crown financial classes. These "programs" have all been birthed from one thing which makes them different than secular social services...Love. We are seeking to do more than provide a need. We want to create friendships founded on the Love which God pours out to all people regardless of one's economic, emotional, mental, or physical state. Unfortunately, many churches today do nothing more than OUTreach programs through which they provide a need at a distance by offering money, putting up angel trees, or the occasional clothing drive. But the OUTreach never becomes an INvitation to join the family, to share in the love of the church community. It is safer to keep those they are reaching OUTside. That way, no one has to get really INvolved. We are currently attempting to break that trend. God has given us a vision and I am excited that we are a part of His works here. We are currently focusing on creating relationships and raising support...physical (we need people who share this vision to come along side of us to help), prayer (faith and prayer are the key variables in following any path which God lays before you), and financial (we live in a world in which everything cost money). If any of you hear God's voice leading you to assist us with your time, prayer, or money please do not hesitate to answer His call. We would love to have you pray for us consistently, volunteer to help, or offer financial support.

Jade has answered God's call to help at our church (First Church of the Nazarene) by being the Nursery Director. Jade has already instituted many positive changes which impacts our children's health and safety while being cared for during the worship services. She is currently sacrificing her ability to attend worship service and Sunday school most Sundays in order to ensure the children are cared for properly. Parents have thanked her for what she is doing and told her that they feel more comfortable about leaving their children in the nursery since she has taken on the Director role. Jade works hard and it can be stressful, but God is using her in great ways and she is doing a wonderful job. Please pray for her as she continues in this role. She needs continued patience and wisdom.

Caleb has the wonderful blessing of being loved on by the best mommy in the world all day long every day of the week. We thank God that He provides so that Jade may live out her calling to be a full-time mommy. She loves spending the days playing with him, teaching him, and guiding him through a world so full of new and interesting things. Caleb thrives under her care and love. I know that much of the glow I see on his face comes from being loved so completely by his mommy. He is walking now and he is unstoppable. He says "please" and "more" with sign language as well as a verbal attempt which only Jade and I are able to understand I think. He is the cutest baby I have ever seen (yes I know I am a little biased). His blue eyes and facial expressions will make even the meanest scrooge melt.

I am still working with USIS. It is a job for which I am thankful although not one I truly enjoy. My heart is not in it. I am able to create my own schedule, work from home, and we benefit from being able to use the company car for personal use. God has truly blessed us with providing a job with so much flexibility and one that pays the bills and keeps food on our table. He always provides. I am seeking His face in my future and I long to work for the church full time one day. I am planning to look into getting a degree in Christian counseling. Helping people navigate through the wilderness of life is my passion. I wandered off that path a long time ago, but God is showing me daily that I need to return to it. I am so happy and complete when God puts me in a situation to help others with life. That is what I believe we are all called to do as Christians, be an active part of a community in which every person encourages one another, learns from one another, teaches one another, laughs and crys with one another. God's glory is well represented in such a community.

To close this letter, I must share with you the most important lesson of 2006 (and 2005) that God has been, and still is, teaching us. God has been showing us what it means to truly be present in peoples lives. Being present is not merely a physical issue. Look at how Jesus was present in the lives of those around Him. He taught and preached God's love and faithfulness to all those who would listen. But He did not stop at words...He touched people. He touched them by tending to their diseases and infirmities. He touched them by spending time with them, relating to them, showing them that God does not want to be an OUTreach program, He wants to transform their lives from withIN. Jesus saved the adulteress from being stoned. He walked among and brought healing to the lepers. He helped the lame to walk, the blind to see, and the dead He brought to life. But most of all Jesus brought hope to the hopeless by becoming part of their lives...God Himself walked with them in their everyday lives. He accepted the immoral adulteresses, crooked tax collectors, the diseased lepers, the down-trodden poor, and the infirm outcasts just as they were. He shows us that God loves us despite our unloveliness. He brings the beauty of acceptance into our lives through His grace and mercy. We are given that grace and mercy to be used by God to spread that same grace and mercy to all those around us. To reach OUT and grab a hold of those who need His love and pull them INto a community overflowing with that love. In order to do that, we must be present in their everyday lives. We must laugh with them and cry with them. We must allow ourselves to rejoice and suffer with them. We are quick to share in the joyous times, but the suffering is harder to really accept as our own.

Can you do that? Can you truly open your heart to allow someone else's suffering to become your own? To stand along side them as Satan shoots his fiery arrows into their hearts, risking being hit with those arrows as well? To allow yourself to be used by God, in ways that may be uncomfortable for you, in order to be His tool of comfort for someone else. If you can not, I pray that you will be able to one day. You are missing the icing on the cake of being a Christian...

II Corinthians 1:3-7,
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort."

"Being among people means being in their midst, not outside. It means being with them, not being over them. It means not looking away from their agony or humiliation, but beholding it, and having the courage to be also wounded by their pain."(Greg Paul, God in the Alley)

Our God is the God of Comfort. He comforts us so that we can comfort others with that same God-given comfort. We suffer and God uses others to comfort us as they have been comforted by Him. Others suffer and God uses us to comfort them as He comforted us. You see, God comforts people through people. When we learn to suffer along side of others, God not only provides comfort through us, but also to us by strengthening our faith as we not only witness, but also participate in, His provision for His people. We are part of a community, we will be the comforters as well as the sufferers at times. There is nothing like the feeling of being used by God to encourage, strengthen, and comfort the suffering. To see the glory of God flicker in their eyes as He shines His light into their darkness and know that He chose you to be a part of that healing. The only equal to that feeling is obtained at the points in your life when you are suffering and you sense His glory flickering in your own eyes and you see His light shine into your own darkness because God has shown His faithfulness by choosing someone through whom He comforts you. Praise the Lord! To comfort and be comforted, those are the moments that make each day worth living!

We love you all! I pray that God chooses to comfort someone through you and that He comforts you through someone else. I pray that the God of all comfort blesses you and those close to you. I pray that your faith in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit increases with each setting sun. I pray that Jesus is your reason for living. I pray that you know I love you the same even if He is not. I praise God for your friendships. God is so very good.

His, emman