Prayer Request for Aunt Sue & family

My dear Auntie Sue has been through years of battle with colon cancer. On Sunday she died and has gone up to meet with Jesus. Please pray for her family, my family, as we mourn and look to the future without her. We know that our God is sovereign over all things; He gives and He takes away. But death is our enemy yet and Satan still controls this world with his strife, pain, and separation from loved ones. We grieve the loss of our Aunt Sue. Please pray that our family will bind together to love each other and hold each other and help each other. Please pray that God's power and victory would be made known to those who attend the funeral and burial (Wednesday 11/18 and Thursday 11/19). Aunt Sue has many friends, coworkers, and neighbors who do not yet know Jesus Christ. May He be magnified in all these things.

Free Audio Book

John Piper's book "Desiring God" is free this month to download at christianaudio.com. Download it now and read/listen to it soon.

Looking Forward to the Holidays

Hooray! I love Holidays and I'm enjoying being the homemaker who can decorate and host others. We just finished up a fun day with the little construction workers dressed for the Hallelujah Party at the chapel - October 31st. Nathaniel hopped and bopped in the bounce houses until he was totally tuckered out and then went to bed at home so nicely! Yeah, no sweet-induced night-time antics for us.

I've attached a few photos of the little construction workers. Nathaniel called himself "George" all day - I guess he thinks that's the name of a construction worker?!

For Thanksgiving, we booked tickets and a cottage to stay in Cambridge, England for a weekend. I look forward to the fellowship and conversation with the friends we will join there. Not one of them is married or has kids, so I hope they enjoy our conversation and fellowship! They did invite us to join them, though.

For Christmas, I look forward to concerts at church (we have some super instrumentalists on our praise team) and Christmas Eve meditation service. We get to help plan these services, which makes me happy because I love to plan music and learn new songs to praise! And we just pooled together to get 6 airline tickets for all the Katzenbergers to come join us here after Christmas. Now I just have to figure out where to put them all.

You'll be seeing a few new blogs I've been reading, books, wish-lists, and other stuff on the side of this blog as I update for the Holidays and read up about the newest gadgets for kids and ways to host happy Holidays. I "brined" a turkey for the last 2 days and roasted it this morning for the pot-luck at Tom's work. I was pretty pleased with the delicious moist flavor. ("Brining" is really the way to go - just soak the bird in lots of salty water, a few whole herbs of choice, a couple cups of liquor of choice and voila - you've got brine!).

I look forward to trying new recipes and sipping hot mochas with you, if you'll be here, or via Skype. Please give us a call sometime, I'd really love to have your company. We are often busy with weekend travels, but we lack deep friendships, and I still really miss my friends and family and feel loneliness creep in whenever I think of each of you.