Merry Christmas! Sayonara 2009!

Hello Friends and Family,

Wow, can you believe that 2009 is going to be over soon?! We are about to finish another decade. Time just flies!

We just finished the 2nd term of school and now we both have 2 weeks of vacation. We had an early Christmas together at our apartment with Laura's parents and a friend of ours who also teaches English in Japan and he is from Australia. We had a really nice time opening presents together, snacking, talking, playing with Allen's new miniature pool table (or rather, watching him play with it!) and listening to Christmas music.

Allen left for Houston yesterday. He will be in our good friends' wedding and visit his family. I'm so glad my parents are here. We all went to Disney Sea together in Tokyo last weekend. It was a lot of fun! We went with our Japanese friend who teaches with my mom.

Tonight, that same Japanese friend, named Kanaco, is coming with us to the Mito Church to sing Christmas carols and fellowship. Tomorrow, we will cook and eat Christmas dinner with a couple women friends from church.

We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas season and a Happy New Year!
Please keep us in your prayers as we start our 3rd term in January. Our goals are to keep up good relationships with the teachers and students, to build on the relationships we're making inside and outside of the Church, to get our Japan driver's liscenses, etc, etc. So, we just want to keep stress to a minimum as we try to accomplish many things while keeping Christ at the center of everything. God is good. This must be basically the goal of all Christians in this coming new year. To accomplish good things while keeping Christ at the center of everything. What would we do without Him. He is the reason why we are even alive or worthy to be called God's children. Thank you Jesus, for living and for dying and then living again for all of us!

Love to you all!

~Allen and Laura