December 2024

Hello friends! What a month, what a year. This year has had many unexpected ups and downs, but I’m forever grateful for the experiences that shape me into who I am today. A hearty thanks to all of you again; I cannot express enough just how much I appreciate your partnership in ministry. Happy New Year!

For those of you interested, our annual Winter Retreat is coming up on 1/17-1/20. If you want to come out for a day, you can register at anyfocus.org/winterretreat so we know to expect you! It’ll be at Riverbend Retreat Center in Glen Rose, TX (about 2 hours from the Plano area).

Merry Christmas! Steph and I drove over to her parents’ house on Christmas Eve to share in their tradition of having snack dinner the night before Christmas and opening presents. The day of Christmas, we had their traditional Christmas lunch (scalloped potatoes, sweet potato chocolate casserole, ham, and Pillsbury Crescent Rolls) and then later that day, we had a video chat with my family in California and Japan! I love the Christmas season because I get to see and talk to people that I don’t normally talk to (not that I can’t.. just that I don’t. Which I guess I have the power to change that.) I hope that you were able to celebrate and see the people that you love this season as well!

Here we are in Cameroon, dressed up to celebrate the Misaje cluster Bible dedication ceremony. For those of you who don’t know, Steph’s parents have worked for Wycliffe for many years now (and continue to do so). Back in 1999, they worked as language surveyors and surveyed the Misaje area of Cameroon. They determined if a language they encountered was a brand new language or simply a dialect of an existing language, how many speakers the language had, if the language was endangered, etc. Based on this report, in 2014, 6 New Testament translations for languages in the Misaje area began. And finally in 2024, these New Testaments have been completed and printed and are being distributed to the people in these regions. There are many cool stories of how God has been working in this region and through this project; what a testimony of God’s faith and goodness over the past 25 years that now these people are able to read the New Testament in their own language! To catch a glimpse of what the dedication ceremony was like, you can watch the video below!

Before connecting to Cameroon (you have to go through Europe to get to Cameroon), we took a pit stop in Paris. It was such a nice place to visit—apparently it had been cleaned extensively in preparation for the Olympics that were held there this past summer. While in Paris, we were able to visit the Louvre, the Pantheon, the Catacombs, the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Élysées, Disneyland Paris, and probably more that I’m forgetting. I honestly never thought I’d visit Europe, so I was so excited to get to be there with Steph. I’m beyond blessed!