Dearest friend,

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!! We hope this letter finds you peacefully enjoying this celebratory time of year with friends and loved ones. We are thinking of you fondly from across the Atlantic!

About this time last year we were packing up our bags to fly home to be with our families for the holidays, and the year before we were packing our bags to move to France. Two years already passed by…this year our bags will remain unpacked and we will be in our little town of St Paul 3 Chateaux for Christmas.

Yes, we are still here! Our plans to move to Nice have not changed; Mike has made several trips down to Nice in the last few months, but we have not yet found an apartment.

The end of October he went down and met with a YWAM team from England who had docked their sailboat in Nice for a few days. This group is part of a new movement in YWAM called Next Wave; they sail from port to port to provide support to pastors and missionaries in various ways. What we did not know before Mike met with them was that they were coming to Nice specifically because they had heard something new was starting up there, and they wanted to pray for the project and encourage the workers…us!

On this same trip, Mike met again with a pastor in the Nice area, someone he had met on a previous trip. The pastor is English, married to an American, and the two of them have been extremely warm and welcoming. Mike was invited to take part in an outreach to the children in the community on Halloween; he was quite impressed with this church's outreach efforts and investment in their community.

On each trip to Nice Mike has been checking out apartments and scouring the different neighborhoods looking for an open door for us to move to Nice. In mid-November, we all went down to Nice to apply for an apartment that appeared to be a great deal, and it was! But there were about 20 other people there to see the apartment as well, and it was given to someone else in the end.

Either way, each trip to Nice has held important times of encouragement and connection with other people working in the city. Here in St Paul, we have been continuing to attend the same church, where we've been given many opportunities to put our individual gifts into practice.

Although we are not part of the staff this year as we were last, there is a Discipleship Training School currently running at the base here in town. We have had many opportunities to have students over for dinner, translate for speakers, and lead times of worship and prayer for the school.

During the week that Mike translated for the lectures, he was able to spend a considerable amount of time with the speaker, who was one of the pioneers for YWAM France and has since left YWAM and started a project with developing micro-businesses in Western Africa. He was exciting to talk to on many levels…he was very encouraging to Mike and prayed that his "original mantle" of pioneering would be passed on to him. Also, as many of you know we hope to take teams into French-speaking Africa once we have established something in Nice; the story of his business' work in W. Africa was inspiring for this hope as well.

So, in the time that we have been waiting to move to Nice, there have still been many valuable contacts and experiences along the way!

COMING UP! In February there are two different teams coming to France from the YWAM base in Kona, Hawaii; they specifically contacted us with hopes of serving in Nice for a part of their visit. We are putting together plans for prayer, outreach, and service in a local church, and are thrilled that news of our project in Nice is spreading! We also have a team hoping to come to Nice next summer.

Please pray: ? For the doors to open so we can move to Nice…with the euro to dollar ratio and increased prices in France, rent especially is ludicrously high. ? Against discouragement: we are frequently discouraged about this delay on our move and continue to battle loneliness and missing home. ? For our health: each of us has had health issues of some kind in the last few months…mostly unsolved and ongoing.

Thank you for all of your prayers and sacrifices. You have helped sustain us and carry us through these last two years in many ways; may you be blessed.

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." Luke 2:14

Love and peace,

Mike, Tara, and Mattias