plans...

I thought I'd wait and blog about our Christmas but will catch you all up on our latest news so you know what our plans are as of now. Darrell's brother will not be needing a transplant immediately as first thought, so we are going ahead with our plans to leave on January 11th. That means less than 3 weeks from now! When I first came to the realization that time was so short and in between there is Christmas and a trip to see Nathan (our oldest), I began to panic. I proceeded to make my lists and have been consistently crossing things off as I finish them. Looks like we'll make it after all. We arrived home a few days ago from a wonderful visit to Dakar, Senegal where we attended a regional conference & also got to spend 10 days with my two sisters and husbands. It was so fun to get up early and have coffee together and just talk for hours. What a wonderful gift from the Lord. Leaving Dakar at 85 degrees F and arriving in Chicago at 24 degrees was quite a shock to the system. Now we'll be going to a place that is more moderate certainly than Chicago. Last I looked, it was about 65 degrees. We are very excited about what God has in store for us in this new chapter of our lives. We also feel incredibly fortunate that we still have new challenges like this at our age. I'll be back in a few days to tell you about our Christmas. Here's our tree & the view from our front yard. Merry Christmas to all...