Christmas 2009
Dear Friends and Family,

As 2009 comes to a close, our family has many things to be thankful for. Home, health, work and community are among the many blessings we count. Joyce will soon finish six years as Chief of Staff in the President’s Office at Denison University and Jeff continues his busy schedule of supply preaching and speaking, freelance writing and consulting, and work as a mediator for the county juvenile court system. In these uncertain times we are blessed by work that both meets our needs and fulfills us.

We still stay busy with community involvement, Jeff with scouts, transitional housing and financial literacy issues, and local archaeology and Joyce as an officer of the Environmental Education Council of Ohio (EECO) and as worship leader (music director) of New Life Community United Methodist Church. After starting out as a new church five years ago, New Life chartered as an official United Methodist church this fall and just opened a community center in the show room of an old car dealership. Needless to say, the young ministry is blossoming.


11 year old Chris is in sixth grade and seems to get noticeably taller by the day.
He crossed over into boy scouts last spring and has already been on several campouts with Granville Troop 65. He joined the band this year as a beginning clarinet player and is loving it. He’s also becoming quite the young thespian (can you say chip off the old block?), recently drawing rave reviews as “Boomer” in Christmas from Scratch at Centenary UMC here in Granville. His youth group puts on two mini-musicals each year, so we’ll have another to look forward to this spring.

A highlight of our year was a week spent in Disney World this summer. It was Chris’s first visit, and I think it’s safe to say that it exceeded his expectations. He especially liked getting autographs from his favorite Disney characters. It was great fun, but not exactly relaxing. We learned later that the average family at Disney World walks 7 miles a day. We’re pretty sure we did at least that much.


We hope you are well and happy, and we wish you a
blessed Christmas.

Love,

Joyce, Jeff & Chris