Merry Christmas and happy new year!!! I hope you all have enjoyed this past holiday season. While it has been hard to be away from family and friends at home these past few months, my team and I have really enjoyed our time together celebrating Christmas in new ways together here. Several of us have been attending an international church here, and we were so blessed and encouraged by the Christmas celebration there. We sang a song together praying for the salvation of the 27 countries represented at our church. It was beautiful. One person from each country stood at the front of the church together and as each country was read, the person from that country would raise that country’s flag. We have people at our church from Finland, Sweden, France, Eritrea, Ethiopia, South Korea, Australia, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Mexico, just to name a few. It was so beautiful to see an image at Christmas time of people from all around the world worshiping Christ together. It was a great reminder of why he came.