Heeey everybody

I'll echo jonny and say how good it is to read about your lives and the things you're learning. I wanted to let you celebrate with me in passing through my first time at home totally substance free! Still a couple of days to go, but I have high (no pun intended) hopes. It's incredible to look at the ways God has worked. I mean, definately a lot of refining and purifying still needed here, but God has been pretty darn gracious to me during this break.

My other news is this: after a whirlwind of a talk with my pastor and a meeting with my deacons, I have been given a License to Minister. Basically, in the Convention Baptist world, that's a first step toward ordination in that it affirms God's call on my life and approves me to speak in churches within my home church's reagion (vouches that I'm not a heretic, essentially). Ordination takes like a long stinkin' time and this is just a little baby step and does NOT mean I will be a pastor, but it is kind of neat and it's an open door I really didn't see coming. So it's been really encouraging to be having these meetings and talking with folks here about the good things God is doing and is going to do. I've been pretty uncertain about my church's direction over the past year, but this return home has been incredible.

Finally, for those of you who don't know, I was planning to take a semester off to work in the oil fields to make some money but it didn't work out, what with the crashing economy and all that jazz. So I'm returning to Briercrest with da boyz to work on a Bachelor of Arts in Global Studies and TESOL (teaching english to speakers of other languages). Now you know.

Love you all, and love hearing from you. I hope you've had awesome Christmases and really, really blessed 2009s. take care.

Joyful Rob