The end of a year is usually marked with things we either plan to remember or wish to forget. The exciting thing about a new year is the hope that things will be better than the year before. It is easy to race forward into the potential of the New Year and forget to take a moment and think about all that happened and more importantly how we saw God at work in it all.

This past year has been a hard but overwhelmingly blessed one. I want to take some time to remember what God did last year.  This is just what He did in our family; he did even more in our ministry and our church.

Last year we tried to sell our house in Missouri. It never sold. Because it didn’t sell some of our good friends were able to live there while they finished up graduate school. This house provided them with space for their two young children without breaking their budget. Allowing them to live there allowed us to cover our mortgage and maintain the utilities. Because those bills were covered we were able to weather a small financial storm for a couple of months when our ministry salary was in flux. Because of our salary concerns we talked to more people about our ministry and God provided new partners to replace some we lost. Because our house didn’t sell we kept renting a house from missionaries who are in Papua New Guinea. With us renting their house they had their mortgage covered and we had an affordable place to live.

We eventually decided that committing to renting out  our Missouri home was the right move in the current economy. We refinanced that home at a low rate and pulled out some equity to save toward a new home in Texas. The day we received the equity check we found out an offer we put in on a house was accepted. We found out the house had expensive foundation problems. Our realtor told us me would likely have to keep looking.  We asked the bank that was selling the house to fix the foundation. We prayed for favor and God led the bank to fix the foundation at no cost to us. We signed the closing paperwork on the 16^th.  Friends from work and church helped us move in. We fully closed on the house December 19^th. A friend in our church helped us paint and fix some things, a quality carpet company installed new carpet in one day at an affordable price. We enjoyed our first night, Christmas Eve, in our new home.  We remembered God’s gift of Jesus and counted it the best of His many blessings. 2011 was a great year, thanks God.