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OK…so I asked on my facebook if updating my status counted as a Christmas card and I got a resounding contradiction…some yes / some no. If you said no as an attempt to get on our annual mailing list for Christmas cards, the joke’s on you. We’ve never sent Christmas cards. However, in the age of blogging I’ve decided to write a “2008 newsletter blog” and call it a Christmas card. This is out of sorts for my blog, but it will also be an atypical newsletter.

2008 gave us Kellsos’ a stronger adoration of God and greater joys in serving Him than many of our previous years together. I like telling stories, so you’re stuck reading a few stories to learn how.

Mole…Mole…Mole

I like food. Jenna likes to cook. The boys have palettes that other kids their ages would fear (Jman asked for Hummus or crab legs several times in his lunch box this year & Noah will eat anything). So when we go on vacation, we eat at weird places. This year’s trip to Balboa Island involved some great meals at a small Vietnamese bistro, Club 33 in Disneyland, Sprinkles Cupcakes and the dish that will bring me back to the island, Chicken Mole at Picante Martins. mmm…

Ok, I bring this up, because our main ministry at our church (Grace Bible Church – Tempe) is what we call Discovery Dinner. It is a chance for us to invite newer people within our body to enjoy a meal and learn more about the core beliefs in our church. Within 3 weeks of our return from Balboa, Jenna had figured out the recipe and it became a D2 staple (in fact, I think it’s on the menu for January).

There is little in life that brings more joy than using your gifts to make His name known. We get an amazing opportunity to incorporate our favorite hobbies (cooking, eating and talking about the Lord) into our main area of ministry in our church this year. It has been fun. In fact, I regularly tell people that I am having as much fun as ever in ministry, as is our entire family. God has truly blessed us this year.

Can I read my Bible with you?

Jenna and I have a philosophical idea about shepherding our children’s hearts to the Gospel. We believe that informal shepherding is incomparable to formal shepherding. Simply put, incorporating the Gospel into everything you do speaks volumes compared to sitting down with your kids and preaching to them at a specific time. We believe that if they see who God is in everything and how we are to behave in all avenues of life, this will be more fruitful than just telling them about who He is and what He’s done. This has really played itself out beautifully, over the years Jonathan and I have had some in depth conversations based on the lyrics of music (Christian and non-Christian), examples of behavior from athletes and just interactions with friends. We have talked about prayer while we were in the shower or discussed God’s heart for the lost while driving home from school. They get to see what Jenna and I believe about our Lord means as much to us while driving to work as it does while worshiping on Sundays.

This being said, I’ve longed for the day when I could have formal individual Bible Study with my kids. However, I did not want to push it and make it be a familial obligation. This year, Jonathan asked for it. He asked if we could sit down and read the Bible together and we have been. Some months more frequently than others, but nonetheless it had been a wonderful time. If you’re interested in more details about those meetings, feel free to read the side bar series on my blog titled, “Gospel Studies for Kids”. The most important thing we can do is teach our children to love the Lord like we do. This year has been a great year of learning how do to that. I’ve learned so much looking at the Bible through the eyes of a 7 year old.

Does the tile in the bathroom seem warm to you?

It isn’t a year in the Kellsos’ house without a major claim on our home insurance. I don’t know if ya’ll have noticed, but housing prices in Arizona have kind of dipped a little in the last couple of years. Because of this, in August, Jenna and I sat down and made our “we’re never moving out of this house, so we better make it as nice as possible to live in” home improvement list. We listed everything we wanted to do to the house over the next 5 years. Items ranged from repainting the bedroom to remodeling the bathroom. We had items like rip out and replace the UGLY white tile in the wet rooms and remove the completely modern beehive fireplace in the living room. When we finished the list, we prioritized it and then worked on a budget for it. Our best guess was that sometime in early 2009 we’d be able to knock off our highest priority items. There was some stuff that we could do this year, but the majority needed some saving.

Then that fateful September day rolled around. Jenna called me at work and said she heard water running in the bathroom, but saw no water. I had her check the meter out front to see if it was spinning and there was no spin, so I told her not to sweat it and I’d take a look when I got home. Later that day, I got home and heard the running, but also saw no spinning on the meter. The next morning Jenna pointed out that the floor in the bathroom had a warm spot. I asked around at work and the consensus was that I had a slab leak…a fully insured slab leak. Meaning that the pipes in the concrete foundation had sprung a leak and we needed to patch them. I’m not sure if you remember, but 4 months after we moved into the house we had planned on remodeling the kitchen. 2 days before I had taken the time off to remodel, we had a small kitchen fire that was just big enough for the insurance company to remodel the kitchen for us. Apparently, that’s exactly the size slab leak we had. We were able to knock every single item off of our 2008 & 1st half of the 2009 list with as little cost as our deductible. God was very good to us in areas that we didn’t even expect or ask. We weren’t worried or wishing for stuff beyond our means, we were just planning for it. God provided in a way we couldn’t have imagined and now we have nice tile in the wet areas of the house and a completely remodeled bathroom. I think I’m gonna build a plan now on how I need to replace my truck with a Bentley. What! It’s worth a shot…right?

I’m excited about our next phase in life

The last 7 years of child rearing have been an interesting part of our life. We have had unbelievable joys bringing 3 children into this world and seeing God make them so different and yet all so great. We get to enjoy Jonathan’s sense or humor, love for sports and constant desire to gain knowledge. We get to laugh at Noah as he is constantly clowning around. We get to see Eden be both a shy princess and tough little sister. God has truly blessed our family. We have also seen difficult times in the process of bringing these children into the world. Because of these issues, the toll that a pregnancy takes on Jenna’s body is really tough. We’ve decided this year that the Kellso family you see today is the Kellso family you’ll see in the future (of course, when I say we’ve decided…I mean we’ve decided…God has veto powers). This is a tough decision to make, but the further we get into this decision the more exciting it becomes.

We don’t know what the future holds for our family, but here are some of the things that we keep thinking & praying about.

• Matt starting some sort of further education, likely in January of 2010 to help be more prepared for more extensive ministry (discussions have ranged from a Master’s in Religious studies to a Master’s in Creative writing).
• Jenna helping in the kids’ classrooms at school, continuing to take her crafting online and therefore putting our Gospel filled lives in front of a Gospel empty world.
• Jonathan joining swim team and trying to follow in Michael Phelps’ footsteps.
• Noah learning to count to 14…I mean getting started with preschool and cracking up a whole new classroom full of peers.
• Eden…well she’s excited to learn to communicate in something more than a grunt.

What a great year 2008 has been and how exciting it is to see how God plays out 2009 for us!