Frozen Fun

Chip bag with Exp date Mar 26 2012, eaten November 20th 2012. Those were some good moose nachos!

What do you do when it's -40F for a month? Well, for the most part you feed your wood stove. The rest of the time you devote to spending time with family, and friends. That's what this month of December has mostly looked like in Galena. Too cold for the sno-go's to work. Not much by way of critters out for hunting or trapping. So we've enjoyed several events, either planned or spontaneous with our family and with our church family and community.
In the middle of the month one of the ladies hosted a baked sweets recipe swap, in which you had to cook a batch of the recipe and bring them to share. The ladies (around 15 of them) thoroughly enjoyed themselves and got some great ideas for recipes. The guys...well we'll just say we attempted 'daddy daycare' at my house. Four dads and what seemed like 200+ kids (slight exaggeration) was quite a lively house. Instead of baked goods, we ate meat. Smoked and jarred salmon, summer sausage, salmon sticks, and smothered moose steaks. It's not a guy event without meat I guess!

Christmas dinner with friends.

One Sunday (again it was around -46F) people were visiting after potluck. Then all of a sudden I saw a pile of boardgames appear. Someone had left went home and got their games and returned for several more hours of fun. The kids all built forts in the Sunday School rooms, while the rest of the Church body made another pot of coffee and broke our Settlers of Catan. I'm still not sure how to play it, but we did have a ton of fun.

Game night hosted at the Bible Church.

And all who believed were together and had all things in common.
(Act 2:44)

All things in common includes the need for company, refreshment, and enjoyment. There were community people who do not attend our church who attended the various events that happened this month. I'm so glad because I want it to be seen that the Body of Christ laughs, loves, eats, smiles, talks, and just plain enjoys being together. This is one of the gifts of the super cold temperatures, because there is so much involved in doing life out here, be it cutting wood, or working on a broken vehicle, or takings kids to this event or that event, there can often be too much to do and not enough time to enjoy each other. In the hustle and bustle of the Thanksgiving to New Years season it is kind of nice to be forced to stop, breath, and enjoy the family of God. What can you do to grow that in your body of believers?

Things you can be praying for:

- A week ago Sunday, a man about my age took his life in Galena. Pray that the enemy would be held out of the lives of the men in the villages who struggle with the temptation to end their lives. Pray that those deeply affected by this lose would come to know Jesus.
- Pray for Don & Brenda Ernst who are SEND missionaries on our interior team. They serve in Huslia, a village 90 miles north of Galena and have been serving there for 23 years! By God's grace they have seen the church they started grow to where they need an addition on their church building. Pray that the Lord would provide men to cut and haul the logs for the construction, 4 mission teams of about 5 guys each  for the building phase in June, and the remainder of the $12,500 they expect the project to cost.
- Pray for Me (Chris) as I prepare to begin a sermon series called "The Work of the Gospel." Pray that the Holy Spirit would prepare the hearts and minds of the hearers to the truth of the Gospel.