Christmas Letter

Dear Family and Friends,
Joseph and I thought it would be fun for me to try my hand at a Christmas letter this year! Then we decided it would be fun to also send it to all our churches..so, here it goes!
This year marked an end and a beginning for us. We rang in our 1st new year as a married couple and brought our 1st year of marriage to an end when we celebrated our 1st anniversary! Now it is crazy to think that in just a few short weeks we will be celebrating our 2nd year of marriage (01-04)!
During the course of this year we have traveled 18 states, put about 25,000 miles on our van and were away from home an average of nine months! The Lord has been good to us in our travels, He has kept us sage and enabled us to be in many churches to share our burden for Norway! Through our travels we have also made many new friends!
We were able to spend most of our summer at home and enjoyed learning the art of hospitality as we had people from church over for homemade pizza and games once a week. While home for the summer we also enjoyed having Joseph's parents come from Michigan to spend a week with us and my parents came for a short visit as well!
This year Joseph was for the first time able to be the main speaker at a Valentine banquet, celebrated his 30th birthday and was given the opportunity to go hunting for antelope! I have received many blessings myself this year, I was given a Coach bag-which is a very expensive purse that only those with a love for purses dream of! I unfortunately, received the pleasure of singing my first church solo and I am now committed to that never happening again! And, I was able to spend a month with a good friend from college between meetings this past September!
Together Joseph and I have grown in our friendship and love. We have realized this year that no matter what God takes us through, it is always for our good and for God's glory. Sometimes we want things to happen in our time and we forget God sees the big picture and that there is always reason for how He is moving us and guiding us, we just have to find the good and find reason to glorify God! And I can't help but to think of the 'good' we find at Christmas time in the Reason for the Season! It was for our good that God sent His only Son to this earth as a baby to be raised to go in our place on the cross for our sins. I pray that this Christmas, we will remember it is for God's glory and not for how many gifts we give or receive...we should glorify God that we have accepted His Son as our Saviour we have Heaven to gain!
For Christmas we look forward to having both sides of the family coming for visits! Last year I was able to host my first Christmas dinner and experienced it with a dinner disaster of having chicken that was not fully cooked-I am hoping to not repeat this disaster! We will celebrate New Years at home, as well as our anniversary. We will actually be celebrating our anniversary a few weeks late, we are hoping that it will work for us to attend a Detroit Red Wings game in Minnesota!
We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Because of the Reason for the Season,
Joseph and Kendra Barnhardt
12-07-09