MERRY
CHRISTMAS!
FROM THE WINDLES
Snow
glistens on the branches and hedge in our front yard. Drifts deep over
the field across the road. Covers unraked leaves, the brambles along the
creek bed behind our house. Sparkles back the reflection of Christmas
tree lights in the window. This isn’t our first snow since moving to
Lancaster, PA. We’ve had flurries and a couple good stick-to-the-ground
snowfalls in the last two years. But it’s the first during the Christmas
season. With candles in windows, wreaths on doors, Christmas lights
outlining houses and trees, and the occasional Amish buggy on the road,
it is as beautiful as a Thomas Kincade painting. Accustomed to tropical
greenery and lighted palm trees at this season, it has been hard to see
beauty in a winter Christmas with its desolate, barren landscape and raw
winds.
Until snow
fell.
The
unnecessary extravagance of it is what boggles imagination. In the
darkest, dreariest season of the year, God takes the effort and some
frozen H2O, transforming dead, brown earth to pure, sparkling white for
no crucial reason we can see—except to delight His creation with its
sheer beauty. And perhaps as an illustration of just what this Christmas
season is about. In the darkest, deadest winter of human desolation, God
stepped into our world, and through the coming of Jesus Christ blanketed
the ugliness of our sin and despair with the pure, clean beauty of God’s
love and mercy and redemption. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they
shall be white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18) is the promise of Christmas.
So what has
this year held for the Windle family? Marty and Jeanette have
clocked more international miles than any other time in our lives.
Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil, Ireland, UK, Poland, Holland, Germany,
Italy, France, Spain, India, Nepal, Myanmar, Indonesia, Philippines, Sri
Lanka, South Africa, Swaziland. Our greatest pleasure over the past year
has been fellowshipping and working together with so many of our BCM
International missionary family in so many countries.
(Photo
captions: 1. Marty, Jeanette, and Ellie in front of a Roman arch in
Italy; 2. Marty preaching in Huenfeld, Germany, 3. Spain’s royal summer
palace just down the street from our BCM camp; 4.
Marty practices leadership management on a tribal African throne;
5. Steve graduates from navy boot camp)
A special
treat this year was having both sets of grandparents visit for their 50th
wedding anniversaries as well as all three sons coming home for
vacations, though not, unfortunately, all at the same time.
Our oldest, Michael, turns 25 on Christmas Day. He did
not, after all, get married and move to the Amazon, as planned last
Christmas, but continues to live and work in Seattle as case manager of
a ministry working with homeless men in Seattle and has recently added a
second job working with troubled youth, putting upwards of 60 hours a
week. His plans remain to finish his PhD and head back overseas at some
point.
Joshua
(21) is still living and working in Wyoming. Stephen (20)
graduated valedictorian from his navy A-school as a medic and is
currently attending a C school for advanced
psych
training. He plays a lot of soccer as well with the navy. Steve recently
received his posting once C-school is finished to Germany.
Ellie
(16) is in tenth grade, a cheer-leader and very involved in her youth
group. Ellie accompanied her parents to our BCM Europe fields this
summer and loved the overseas experience so much she didn’t want to come
home. She was able to participate with a couple work teams and made a
lot of international friends. In October she was able to participate in
a youth conference and outreach in Washington, D.C.
Jeanette
finished a new book title, Betrayed, scheduled for release
March, 2008, with Tyndale House Publishers in both English and Spanish (Paz
Ardiendo). Please do keep an eye out for it in bookstores.
Proceeds from the book go towards our ministry. She
continues to work with developing a media department for BCM and writers
training and spoke in a dozen conferences over the past year.
Marty
as
president of BCM International remains busier than we would have
believed possible. But he enjoys getting back into the pulpit speaking
in churches and conferences as well as an adult Sunday school class. New
Years Eve marks two years for us since we arrived in Lancaster, PA.
For more on
what we’ve been up to, please check out our ministry and mission
websites:
www.bcmintl.org,
www.windlemission.org;
www.jeanettewindle.com. Sign up for the BCM World, our new on-line
and print magazine at the BCM website. One change after more than 20
years is that our missionary prayer letter service has had to close its
doors for lack of personnel. Therefore we too will be sending out
communication by email from now on rather than print, so please do send
us your email address to get into our ministry database.
That is
about it for news from here. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without
telling you how much we appreciate you all and your friendship and
prayers and faithful support for our ministry. May the Morning Star
shine His light and joy into your homes this Christmas season.
In the
service of the King,
Marty and
Jeanette Windle
BCM
International
309 Colonial
Drive/PO Box 249
Akron, PA
17501-0249