2005christmas

The Christensen Chronicle

Christmas 2005 Volume 6 Issue 1

Dear Friends and Family,

This has been a fun year of bird-watching for our family-Sean & Heather got to see some new species in Guatemala this summer, Ian has started his "life list" of birds he's identified, and most notably, since 2000, our family has had predictable spring visits from a Blue Stork every other year, but this time he didn't skip a year and made a most surprising visit in late November, and most surprising of all, the stork turned pink! That's right, God gave our family an early Christmas present on November 29 with the birth of Elliana Joy. She was 7 pounds, 20 inches, and has positively won over the hearts of all the Christensen boys!

Ian got to have an extra visit with Mommy and Baby Ellie the night of her birthday and as he and Daddy prepared to go home for the night, Ian said, "Daddy, when Baby Ellie comes home to our house, my heart will be filled with joy!" Ian started kindergarten this year through the Wisconsin Virtual Academy-a home-based public charter school-so Heather is teaching him, but he has an "official teacher" he interacts with several times a month. Several of our friends have their kids in the same program, so it's been fun getting together for field trips. One evening, earlier this fall, Ian asked Sean a lot of questions about Adam and Eve's first sin, Satan's temptations and our need for Jesus to die on the cross for our salvation. After his questions were answered, he prayed to ask Jesus to be his Lord and Savior. The next day Erik decided he needed to do that too, so Sean prayed with him before bedtime. We don't know exactly how much Erik fully understands, but both boys have a real love for God and it's thrilling to see their growing faith.

Erik turns four years old this March. He's set on having a Buzz-Lightyear birthday theme and is counting the months. Erik joins Ian for some of his schooling-Bible, Art, Music, and sometimes History-and spends a lot of time playing with Joey or by himself. Erik loves to sing and has become our family songwriter. His recent top hits are: "Jesus Made All of Us" and "I Love You, Ellie." Sean remarked that Erik is like an Ent from The Lord of the Rings books, that is, he takes about three times the amount of words (and seconds) to say what he's thinking. What Erik lacks in speediness, he more than makes up in goofiness. After one of Ian's in-house performances, Erik retorted without a strain of sarcasm, "Ian, that was so funny I almost laughed!" Erik does have a great sense of humor and both he and Ian love to entertain their younger brother, Joey.

Josiah is a happy-go-lucky 20 month old. He loves to do whatever his big brothers do, especially when it's horseplay. He wrestles, does karate moves, and cheers whenever he sees a Green Bay Packers logo (they need fans like him this season!) Joey has recently fallen in love with the Pooh and Sesame Street characters and carries their books and stuffed animals with him wherever he goes. He is very sweet with Elliana. He can say "Ellie" and is often the first to hear her cry and run to her aid! As you can see, Josiah has also been taking lessons on goofiness from Erik and can make some wonderful faces!

Family Update from Sean: Our family kept plenty busy this year with our second missions trip to Guatemala in July. It was a very wet, but worthwhile trip with a variety of ministries on and off the missionary compound and our boys did a good job overall. The missionary team there has invited me to return the last week in April to teach in their Discipleship Training School, so I'm looking forward to that, but the rest of the family will stay home this time. After we returned from Guatemala, we left for a three week vacation to visit Heather's family and many friends who helped us go on our missions trip. We visited ten states from Wisconsin to Maine and made a short foray into Ontario to the African Lion Safari, which gave us some close encounters with baboons, zebras and rhinos. Once we returned from vacation, we decided to go camping in southwestern Wisconsin for three days. Since then, we've barely left the house! We got the school room ready and Heather has spent much of her time teaching Ian. This fall our church held a "40 Days of Purpose" campaign using Pastor Rick Warren's best-selling book The Purpose-Driven Life. It was a ton of work for my team and I, but the results were 60 small groups meeting with 300 adults over those six weeks. Our small group is still meeting weekly at our home. During the snowy months of this year, we've been reading The Chronicles of Narnia as a family. We read the first four books last January - March and finished the sixth book just a couple weeks ago. The boys are looking forward to starting "The Last Battle" soon.

Family Update from Heather: With preparing for and leading the Guatemala trip, summer vacation, homeschooling and having a new baby, I've kept plenty busy with little time for anything else. I was able to squeeze in two scrapbooking weekends that were very enjoyable. This has been a year of God's blessings. Back in December of last year we made some commitments in our giving and so we decided to keep track of the ways God would provide for us and bless us and we have made quite a list! Of course, the safe arrival of Elliana Joy was the biggest blessing of all. She is the only infant we've had at Christmas time and so seeing her precious little features reminds us that God, Himself, became the infant Jesus some 2,000 years ago. How God the Son could humble himself to be born as a baby and to live in this corrupt world is beyond our understanding. But we are so thankful for His coming and for the gift of salvation and reconciliation with God that his birth, death and resurrection give us. Jesus is our greatest blessing of all!

We wish you God's greatest blessings in this New Year! Thank you for your friendship in our lives.

With love,

Sean, Heather, Ian, Erik, Josiah and Elliana

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