HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Welcome 2011! I'm sure another exciting and busy year is upon us, leaving us to wander what God has in store for our family, the Czechs we live among, and your families! We rung in the new year as only the Czechs do....on their rooftop terraces and balconies, lighting off fireworks that we've never seen the likes of in the US (unless you're licensed and surrounded by firetrucks), and seeing the city sky light up and celebrate for nearly an hour. It's something that cannot be described in words, one must see it to fully believe and appreciate it...it has become one of the highlights of our year! Hunter and Clem experienced WAAAAY too much excitement in anticipation of this year's celebration! : )

We would like to apologize for not providing a November and December update to you. And we would like to say THANK YOU for continuing to stay in contact with us and keep us in your prayers anyway! Your prayers were much needed and definitely felt by all of us as we experienced two and a half incredibly busy months. Just when we thought life couldn't get any busier, it snuck up on us and, well, almost consumed us. It was a good and exciting "busy", but left us incredibly exhausted and has taken us most of our Christmas holiday to recover.

And before I go any further, I would like to give you an update on Clem's health. As many of you will remember, we sent out an urgent prayer request for Clem, as he had experienced some scary health issues, requiring an ambulance ride and many health tests to be run over the last three weeks. I am very happy and relieved to report that every health test has come back negative and he is feeling much better. He has a couple more tests that will be run this week and a couple more appointments with doctors to discuss the test results. We still have no answers to what was going on with him health wise, but are beginning to lean towards the possibility of stress and spiritual warfare to blame. This has been an eye opening experience for us, and leads us to continue asking for prayers for our family as we desire to stay healthy physically and spiritually so that we can tackle God's plan for our

family with full force and to the best of our abilities.

We want to thank you for giving to the Lottie Moon Christmas offering, helping to support our family and over 5,000 others on the field. Here is a similar video we gave to our prayer partner supporting churches. Please click on the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWoLimMXTVo

So, what did November and December hold for us? The office move was successful and is behind us now. As soon as Clem finished up there, we put our focus into our personal move across town. And again, God blessed us with a smooth transition. Both of these events kept us busy, but they were both accomplished "glitch" free. Praise the Lord! We got on it, and had everything unpacked and put away within 2 weeks of our move...a personal best! We're getting pretty good at this moving thing...but personally, I'm hoping I don't have anymore "practice" for a while. We're ready to settle in for a bit!

Allie has continued swimming weekly, doing ceramics after school one day a week, and has begun taking piano lessons from a college girl we met at English camp over the summer. She has also continued meeting with a Czech tutor to help her learn the language and assist in school work,

but has begun meeting with a new tutor, also a girl we met through English camp last summer. These girls have become sweet additions to our weekly schedule!

Hunter enjoyed Digiphoto club at school over the fall and looks forward to starting the "Explore It" club...he's still our little science guy! We are currently trying to find him a drum teacher...pray for our sanity! : ) He takes one day of Czech lessons and two days of Spanish lessons each week at school. Not real sure which language he'll be speaking when we return for our stateside time in a few years, but I'm kinda bettin' it won't be Czech...he's taking to Spanish much quicker than Czech! : )

We mentioned Ondrej, Mrs. Stankova and a Thursday morning Bible study in the prayer requests of our last update to you. All of which have brought new opportunities to share the Gospel and God's love with those around us. Clem has been praying for a national believer to partner with him in his street evangelism efforts...and God provided Ondrej. We met Ondrej through a soccer club that Hunter was in last winter. After prayerfully considering Clem's request that he join him for evangelism, he finally came back to Clem, excited to see what God would do through their efforts. They meet weekly and choose a different part of Prague to reach out to and share God's love and good news. They have witnessed God stirring in the hearts of those they meet, and it has made them excited to continue on. They have handed out Bibles,

prayed with individuals, and fed the homeless. All of which has brought these individuals one

step closer to God. Please continue to pray that God move through Clem and Ondrej and bring about His miracle of salvation to those they speak to.

Mrs. Stankova is the woman who teaches English at the Czech school that Allie attends, and who has allowed us to sing Christian songs and share about Jesus' birth and gift of salvation during holiday times in her English classes. She felt the need to improve her English and approached me about tutoring her one day a week. We have been meeting for several weeks now, and it has brought with it the opportunity to speak a bit about her spiritual beliefs and to answer her questions about what I believe and why. She is open to spiritual conversation, and is curious to hear what I believe and why I believe so strongly. Please pray that God will continue to stir and move in her life, and that she continues to feel comfortable to speak openly with me and to continue asking questions.

I am now attending a Thursday morning Bible study, hosted by a couple of moms at Hunter's school. Although his school is a Christian International school, around 90% of the families

attending there are unsaved. In past years several unsaved mothers have attended, it has been a wonderful outreach ministry. This year a much smaller group, all of whom are believers, are attending. Please join me in prayer and ask God to help us reach the unsaved families that we're involved with through the school. And for God to give each of

us ladies wisdom as to how to best use this opportunity to draw those around us into this group and minister to them.

The week of Thanksgiving gave us the opportunity to share with our language tutors and my ESL class why we celebrate this holiday, how it began, and what we're thankful for. Our language tutors have been much more open to personal/spiritual conversation with us, and the Christmas season always brings extra opportunities to share. We spent Thanksgiving afternoon with our

colleagues, two of which are Czechs, celebrating with a traditional Thanksgiving meal and a time of thanksgiving. And the kids created a fun version of "Thanksgiving" charades, where we ALL were required to participate and act out various things related to the Thanksgiving weekend. It was fun to see all of our children (7 in all) so excited and having so much fun together on that special day, it eased our longing to be with a family, just a bit.

December gave us our third opportunity to share the Christmas

story with the children in the Czech school, as well as with my ESL class. We had a good time in the school, sharing with them again. Hunter was already on his break from school, so

he came with us. Several of the boys that he was in class with last year were excited to see him and asked him to play during their break time. During this visit we had several children ask us some interesting questions, allowing us to share in some very special ways with them. Only one child in the three classes we met with understood the Christmas story well, and the Biblical account. Some had a very basic knowledge of the story, and many had some very interesting and incorrect ideas as to what it all meant. And a few had absolutely no idea. Please pray for these children. It was very exciting for us to be allowed to share with them again, but so sad to see that for many of them, our time there is their only exposure to Christ and who he is.

The week before Christmas I was able to share the Christmas story again with my ESL class. I took the account from the Bible and put the Word in front of them and we used it as reading comprehension practice and then discussed it for our conversation practice. Sadly, two ladies had to leave early to head to another event that evening. Two ladies were unable to attend because of family gatherings, and one had no desire to read words from the Bible and clammed up. The other two ladies were happily engaged in conversation and really gave the words before them some thought. One in particular seemed very interested and curious about all of the details....especially involving the angels in the sky singing their praises to God for the birth of Jesus. Please continue to poor out prayers for each of these ladies. They all have a different desire, or lack of desire, to be involved in spiritual conversation and often times it is hard to know how to proceed with them and make the most of every opportunity I have with them. Please ask God to give me wisdom to know how to continue on with them and best minister to them in such a way as to allow God to stir in their hearts and draw them closer to him. Please pray with me as I seek God for strength to be bold in my witness to these special ladies!

Hunter and Allie were in the Christmas play at our church. Allie is quite the ham, and always loves a good opportunity to be front and center stage, so she embraced the opportunity whole-

heartedly. Hunter does not like being in the spot-light, but even he enjoyed his roll. The leaders wrote in a small part just for our kids so they could be involved in their heart language. It was such a ministry to our kids to see how much they are loved and appreciated there. I'm always amazed and humbled when the people God sent us to minister to, serve and disciple become the ones ministering to us...it's a beautiful picture of what God's church should be...each of us using our talents, gifts, and Christ's love in us to minister to and serve each other.

Christmas weekend brought with it

some much needed rest, several Skype calls with family, and special time for the four of us to spend a lot of playtime together. It's been a while since we were able to take a whole weekend to drop all of our responsibilities and just focus on each other. What a special gift our free time together has been!!! Please pray with us as we begin this new year asking God to help us prioritize in such a way as to make this a more common occurance in the year ahead.

(Hunter witnessing the annual carp slaughter as the Czechs choose their fresh carp to feast on for their Christmas Eve celebrations.)

As I come to the end of this post, I would like to renew our prayer partnership that we began with many of you last January. As we begin another year of ministry together, I would like to "refresh" our commitments to each other. I would like to ask you to choose a member of our family (or our whole family) to shower in prayer one day a week. In return, we will shower your family in prayer on that same day. Although we pray for each of you often, this will allow us an opportunity to lift your family and any specific needs you have up to our Father, and to thank him for you being in our lives and ministry. If you are interested in partnering with us through this reciprocal prayer commitment, please reply back to this post (your replies remain private, they only post publicly if I give permission, which I will not be doing in this case), or through e-mail for those of you who have our e-mail address.

ADDITIONAL PRAYER REQUESTS AND PRAISES:

* Please join us in praising and thanking God for Hunter's new friend, Oskar. Oskar is from Sweden and began learning English at the start of the school year. Hunter and Oskar have hit it off in the last month, and Oskar came over to play during their school break. Hunter will be going to his house to play on Saturday. We are very hopeful that this is the special friend we have all been praying for! Hunter has also begun to form a special friendship with Preston, one of our colleagues' sons. The friendship has been slow to form simply because we live on opposite ends of the city and are involved in different ministries. But over the last couple of months they have found they have a lot in common and have had several opportunities to hang out together. God is beginning to show Hunter some answers to our prayers and remind him that he DOES belong here, and that he has a very special place for him in Prague.

* Alex and Sasha are finally back in Prague. Sasha was finally granted a Visa to stay in Prague. They were apart for much of last year while she was forced to stay with their families in Moscow and Ukraine, while waiting on the Czech government to decide whether or not they would allow her to stay. And they're expecting their first child! Please thank God for giving them an answer to their visa issues and help them recognize God's hand in this answer. Also pray for opportunities to continue building our relationship with them in the coming months and for opportunities to share openly with them about Christ's gift of salvation to them. And pray for the health of their baby and for God to work in their hearts through this special addition to their family!

* Please pray with us as we seek how and where God desires us to serve him in the year ahead. January is a time of refocusing our efforts, setting ministry goals and creating a plan of action to accomplish those goals.

* Clem is beginning another 8 week on-line seminary course this month. Please pray for strength and time to accomplish his ministry tasks, office tasks, language studies and seminary studies. He has a full plate in front of him as we kick off the new year.

* Clem is beginning to feel God helping him develop some ideas as to how to reach businessmen in our community. Please pray with him as he continues praying about this and seeking God's leading and timing.

* I feel my plate is full with language studies, English ministries, and being mom/transporter/maid : ). I am also feeling the need to find time in my week to meet with a language partner, allowing me to practice my conversation skills. I tend to overload my plate, which always leads me down the road to burn-out. Please pray with me as I am focusing this month on prioritizing and choosing the tasks God has for me for the weeks, months and year ahead, rather than trying to meet the expectations I place on myself, and those expectations I think others have of me (which often times are much higher in my mind than in reality).

Thank you for loving us and supporting us and our ministry in Prague through your prayers! May your year ahead be full blessings and special growth in your relationships with Christ and your ministries. Please fill us in on your happenings and any prayer requests that we can lift up on your behalf! It's always an honor and blessing to hear your news and serve you through prayer!

"Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don't be impressed with yourself. Don't compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life." Galatians 6:4-5, The Message

With Love,

Clem, Carrie, Hunter and Allie