Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Winter Prayer Letter!


Our winter prayer letter is finally finished and heading out in the mail. If you would like to receive these prayer letters in the future, please email us at lindsay.birkey@wgm.org or jon.birkey@wgm.org with your email or mailing address. Click here to view our fall prayer letter online. 

Blessings,

Jon & Lindsay

Christmas Travels

Merry Belated Christmas!

This year we traveled up to Wisconsin and Minnesota to visit Lindsay's family for Christmas. The Lord provided safe travels up and were able to make great time (7 1/4 hrs). Lindsay's parents live in Sparta, WI (about 1/2 hr east of Lacrosse). We enjoyed catching up with her parents as we haven't seen them since last Christmas. We also were able to meet with the pastor of her parents church about getting an opportunity to share about going to AZ. He welcomed us back to share with the congregation sometime in the next couple of months! 

On Christmas Day, we visited Lindsay's grandparents (on her mom's side) for Christmas Lunch. We opened gifts and I (Jon) talked their ears off about Ireland. Hopefully I didn't bore them too much with all the pictures. :) Speaking of pictures....Here is a family photo from Christmas Day. 
On the way back home on Christmas, we dropped in to see Lindsay's grandmother (on her dad's side). She enjoyed seeing all of us again and also watching Amos react to her singing stuffed dog. 

We noticed a winter storm was brewing in Indiana so we took of early this morning from Wisconsin. After a brief stop at my Aunt's house in northwestern Indiana to check on the weather, we finally made it home after 9 1/2 hrs on the road! Ugh. Glad to be back home and sleeping our own bed tonight. We are grateful once again for God's provision and safety and for great times with our family. 

We hope that your Christmas was filled with special memories and fond moments with loved ones. Blessings to you all!

Jon & Lindsay 

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Jobs and Family Time

Tonight, we thought we'd update you on our jobs and time spent with family. First, jobs. Jon's job at Pioneer is going well. Harvest lasted till the end of October. Since then they have been packaging seeds. Jon has been doing a lot of fork truck driving. Pioneer has been a good employer. They gave us a turkey for Thanksgiving and have been very good about giving time off when we need it. 

Lindsay's job has been going well also. Recently, she's been sent out to a satellite location of the hospital for a few days each week. She's really enjoying the opportunity to work with kids and their families on a day to day basis. 

This Thanksgiving we were given a couple days off to visit family. We gathered at Jon's Aunt's house in Crown Point, Indiana. It was great to meet up with family from Ohio and around the area. This Christmas, we plan to go visit Lindsay's family up in Wisconsin. Please be praying for good traveling weather as we will have an 8-9 hour drive ahead of us. 

At the end of the month, on the 29th, we will also be welcoming Jon's brother Phillip and his wife, Esther, back from Bangladesh. They were married this summer in Northern Ireland and we will be having a 2nd wedding reception for them back here in the States. We look forward to celebrating with them. 

We hope you are able to enjoy the holiday season in the company of friends and family as well! 

Wishing you safe travels and many blessings in Christ,

-Jon and Lindsay

Monday, December 3, 2012

Apartment

Long time no see...or read...

It has been a while since we have last posted. It isn't because we don't have much to say, we just aren't very good at making time to write new posts. So we apologize for that. 

We wanted to give you an update on our housing situation. After we left Morton, IL in June, we settled into a farm house that was way too big for us. But it was only a temporary stay. We were in the process of helping some friends of ours convert a garage into an apartment. It was finally finished in October and we were able to move in! Imagine moving all your stuff into a one car garage! We actually like it very much. It keeps us from forming a lot of clutter and it's quick to clean. The washer and dryer are pretty sweet too!  Here are some pictures. 


The orange wall is where the garage door is. We sealed it off and boxed it in. 

The checkered room is our bathroom. We have a full shower, toilet, and even a small vanity. The shower wall is actually linoleum. A pretty inexpensive and cool idea. 

You'll notice we don't have any appliances other than the fridge. We use a toaster oven and a two burner cook-top to make our meals with. We use our microwave too. 

We had an interesting first couple of nights at the apartment. Lindsay woke up in the middle of the night to a scratching sound. After looking around, she went back to bed. A few minutes later she heard it again. This time she located the sound coming from a box of nutri-grain bars. She quickly closed the box. Then she shook it and realized it was heavier than it should be. At this point she decided Jon needed to get up. After shaking the box, Jon agreed that there was something in the box that shouldn't be there. They agreed that they had a stow away mouse from the farm house. Jon took it outside and released it. The very next night, Lindsay woke up again to a scratching sound. We aren't sure whether we had two stow aways or the same mouse found its way back in. We set up some sticky traps and caught another one. We have been mouse free and able to sleep through the night since. 

That's all for now. We'll be posting more this week with some more updates about our jobs, fundraising, what's going on in AZ, and family time. 

Blessings,

Jon & Lindsay