Merry Christmas 2010!!!

A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of our friends and family!!! We hope this message finds you all healthy, happy and enjoying the reason for the season!!!

In the beginning of November, we made a 15 hour day-trip back to our native state of Pennsylvania---for good!!! We loaded all of our stuff into 19 feet of trailer space and put all of the animals in the cars before driving 15 hours, and surviving. Daryl accepted a position as Children's Pastor at the Lebanon Area Evangelical Free Church and Monica transitioned to Starbucks store #6 in Hershey, PA. The church has has made the transition easy for us and Daryl is loving his new job! Monica is getting exhausted from the crazy retail schedule, so she is searching for a new job that hopefully will provide more routine and stable hours.

We figured you might want our current address. Daryl's mom has been gracious enough to open her home to us until we can begin looking for a house in the spring.

1270 Pine Grove Rd

Fredericksburg, PA 17026

Fall 2010

We are moving!!!!!! The plans are underway for us to move back to Pennsylvania and in a few short weeks, we will be leaving the Chicagoland area for the mountains of home.

Daryl has accepted a Children's Pastor position at the Lebanon Area Evangelical Free Church in Lebanon, PA starting in mid-November. You can go to http://www.lebefree.org/ and see Daryl's video expressing his passion for ministry. After we were married in 1999, we attended this church and served as youth leaders. There are still a lot of familiar faces and the church is growing, especially with children!! We couldn't be more excited for him to be back in full-time ministry and to be back home with family and friends!! Our last piece of the puzzle will be to find someone to sublett our townhouse here in Illinois, and eat a final slice (or 2) of deep dish pizza.

Monica will be transferring to another Starbucks (store #6 for her) in Hershey, PA seeing how it's at least a job and those are hard to come by these days. She hopefully will be able to maintain her supervisor position even as a transfer. The goal is to find a fulltime job, hopefully outside of the retail realm and in her field of study.

Daryl is still working on his Master's of Biblical Arts at Moody Theological Seminary, but it is difficult when finances are tight and you work fulltime at Lowes. Fortunately he only has a few semesters left and most likely will be able to study with online classes while in full-time ministry. He already has some great ideas for his new ministry position and is extremely excited about getting started.

The start of a New Year 2010

2010!! Wow, a new decade! Both Daryl and I are hopeful for lots of changes this year-starting with Daryl's new job. He applied for an outside sales position with Lowes by way of a contact that I had at Starbucks. After a 3rd interview they were so impressed with his sales and people skills but felt he lacked the product knowledge. The managers, however, did not want to lose such a great sales person, so they offered him a full time position in another department with the prospect to promote him in the near future. The benefits are quite promising and Daryl always works hard no matter what the position. He is just so happy to be employed full time, with guaranteed pay and that he is not going door-to-door outside in the cold!!

Daryl also finished a 3rd interview for a ministry position with some amazing potential in the future! We will not know the outcome of this opportunity for another few weeks, so we'll keep you posted!!

This semester at Moody Theological Seminary, Daryl is taking 2 more classes; Preaching from the Old Testament and Apologetics & Evangelism. He's got a lot of reading and writing to do, but he loves every minute of it! His text books from class, have sparked many great conversations with friends and strangers.

I continue to work for Starbucks, but I am seeking other employment opportunities that will advance me in the professional world and provided better pay with the same benefits.

In March, we are soooo looking forward to traveling Orlando to visit Monica's family!! This trip can't come soon enough, since we haven't seen my family since their visit in September. There will be much needed rest, relaxing, visiting and warmth!!