On the Home Front

On the right is a fairly standard British electrical outlet. It’s better than twice the size of the American equivalent, and it also provides 220 Volts at 50Hz. Translation: Almost nothing we own that requires electricity is going to England. Take a look around your house. You’ll be amazed (we were) at how many things you own run on electricity.

Life at home has been busy, busy, busy. There has been lots and lots of sorting, packing, and planning. We’ve given, sold, packed, or thrown out a bunch of stuff already. In fact, we had some friends over the other night, and it turned into a moving sale! We now have a growing list of “sold” things, just waiting to be delivered before we leave the country.

Cassia

Cassia is growing like a weed… a tall, skinny weed (no surprise there). She’ll be 2 years old in January and boy is she active! Her vocabulary seems to grow hourly some days, as she attempts to imitate almost everything we say (nothing like a little parrot to help you think before you speak!).

Snow

Since we’ve already had over six inches of snow at our house, she has also discovered the wonder of “no-ss ow-sigh” (snow outside). She LOVES it. Coming back inside is always a traumatic experience. We’ve discovered that “hot” chocolate can assuage some of the pain of coming inside, but that her “spill-safe” cup leaks chocolate all over the house. So… how about some crackers (and a nice safe highchair) with that chocolate?

"At the Office"

Despite our focus on support raising this year, I’ve still been involved in the day-to-day ministries of HCJB Global. This year I’ve spent a lot of time focused on keeping HCJB Global secure. Hours and hours have been spent doing research in order to help HCJB Global deal with the security requirements that come along with accepting credit card donations. February found me migrating to the mission’s website after an anonymous hacker broke in to the old server. WWW.HCJBGlobal.org, as well as nearly a dozen other websites in various languages, are now on a new and much more secure server. In addition, I’ve been serving on the worldwide Information Technology team, and training other missionaries to use various security tools. It’s been a very busy year.

Josh