Heading Home . . .
After six years on the field we are finally heading home for furlough. We will be flying out of Sydney Australia on the 5th of December (U.S. time) and arriving in Charlotte NC on the 6th. Please pray for good health and safety as we make the very long journey home. We wish this could be a much longer furlough but with Austin beginning Grade 9 in high school and other ministry commitments we have to get back in February. Hopefully, we can make our next furlough a much longer one and see many more churches. We have tried to schedule in as many as we could. For all of our churches that we miss on this trip, we do plan to send you our new DVD, a new family photo and several of our prayer cards. Thank you so much for your understanding. We appreciate every single church and individual who supports our work here in Australia. Please pray that as we travel we will be a blessing to those we meet. We are looking forward to updating you on the work here and especially spending some time with our family and friends. One of the most difficult parts of missionary life is the time you have to spend away from your loved ones. Our precious nieces and nephew have grown up without us being there. We look forward to catching up with them especially. Please pray for our ministry in Australia. We are so pleased to see several of our people here stepping up to take over the work and keep things going while we're away. They will still be working their full-time jobs so this will be more work on them. We also have some families who will be moving while we are gone. One of them will be moving all the way to China. They are faithful workers in the ministry here and will be greatly missed. Finally pray that we will be able to secure more financial and prayer support while we are home. Finances continue to be an issue with the weak American dollar and rising housing, petrol and power bills. Thank you so very much! We hope to hear from you soon. May the Lord richly bless your ministry especially during this very special time of year when we gather to celebrate Jesus 'birth!

Looking Back
As we approach the end of another year, we want to take the time to reflect upon God's many blessings. We started off 2011 with our very first family camp at the beach. Most of our families attended and enjoyed a great weekend of fellowship, Biblical teaching and a special baptism service. What a blessing to see three people get baptized, two of our men who had recently received Christ and one of our young girls from Children's Church. Our men's and women's Bible studies continued throughout the year with our men finishing up their series on Jeremiah and beginning a new study on the book of Proverbs. Our ladies studied women of the Bible and finished up with a course on "surviving stress" which focused on the life of Paul. Our annual themed event in June brought over 55 people out to enjoy a Country and Western evening. This was a very successful outreach event for our church. Our ladies attended their first women's conference in August and several of our leadership attended a Leadership Summit in October. Our children's church attendance grew throughout the year as well which Is very encouraging. We are looking forward to what God has in store for us in the coming year. Please continue to pray for the ministry here.