brandonandkatie.com

This morning we got an email from the finance office at Sunset informing us that we received yet another anonymous check, this one from someone who wanted to contribute strictly to our relocation needs. The amount was very humbling, and it’s amazing that one individual would give so much.

Check out this video of Michael and Lucy’s son, Canaan. He’s singing Here I Am To Worship In Russian. I just love that missionary kids get to pick up a second language at such a young age, and hearing him give praise to God in another language is encouraging so many different ways.

I ventured outside without gloves on to take some pictures. My hands only lasted about five minutes before I had to come inside, but I did get a couple I really like (and that really convey what it feels like here today).

I know it’s rarely considered appropriate to vent about problems in your marriage, especially over the internet, but sometimes things get so bad that you just can’t keep quiet about them. My hope is that by getting this all out there, some of you might be able to help.

I read an article in the New York Times this morning that has been rolling around in my mind. It’s called What Could You Live Without and it’s the story of a family that decided if they had less nice things, they could help many more people. Inspired by their 14-year-old daughter’s observation of our imbalanced world, they sold their house and moved into a smaller one, using the extra money to help a charity. In so doing—as so often happens when others choose to give rather than receive—they discovered a happiness money can’t buy.

When we were visiting Reno this Christmas, my mom wanted me to go out and get some good pictures of my sister’s son, Ezekiel. As we were building up for the shoot, we all just decided to take some family photos too. The sad part is that the picture above isn’t a complete family photo.

I don’t know about you, but over this last week I’ve had a hard time feeling to bad about my hardships in light of having lost everything I’ve ever known, like so many of the people in Haiti. At one point during our frustrating day last week I had the thought, Well, at least I didn’t just go through an earthquake and lose my entire family. Even though pain is relative and we should not belittle the feelings we have, a healthy dose of perspective keeps my thoughts spiritually in line, I think.

It was only a few hours after we heard about our wonderful gift to go to Mexico that we got a call from one of the elders at the church in Amarillo letting us know that the church wasn’t going to be able to pick up any new works and would not be able to be our sponsoring congregation. They had hoped to make it work, but the numbers weren’t coming in, and so they had to decline.