Dear family and friends,

We had such a lovely Christmas season. I hope you all did, too. The holidays always go on for a while here, and this year they seemed even longer. However, that made them slower and more deliberate than usual, or at least it seemed that way to me. If you read our blog, you will have seen at least some of our news already.

In our family, we had a wonderful Advent and "First Christmas," with lots of music school concerts, church services, and more. Jaan is in the church theatre group, and they performed a play several times at church, and then in schools and other venues. Probably the best part of "Second Christmas" was when the children's choir from church came to sing for our neighbours; we all loved taking part in that!

Then, the next big event was banquets for the orphanage workers. Alys, the missionary that I help here, does these every other year. Usually she cooks and decorates and does everything with her own helpers. This year, we did it all at a fancy restaurant, which made it less work for us, and a very, very special experience for everyone involved. These banquets are a great time of pouring love into the workers, and showing them that we appreciate them. I really think some of that love and attention trickles down to the kids they work with day in and day out. There was also a neat followup to the banquets this year when some of the restaurant employees came over to visit the orphanage and donate a big, live Christmas tree.

We finally got to celebrate Christmas with the kids at the orphanage in the beginning of February. That was a wonderful day! Jaan, Raia, and Asya helped for the first time this year. I've already written about that and posted a few photos here.

All through the season Will kept up with his usual office work, and the Agape teams were very busy. Here's a little bit about that (by Will):
This Christmas season, December 2016 - February 2017, Agape volunteers and staff were able to take the Good News of Christmas to 74 orphanages spread across 17 regions of Ukraine. 7,650 needy children received Christmas presents: warm socks, hats and gloves, candy, and more!

Thank you for reading. More than anything, thank you for your love and prayers and support of us. We would love to hear from you, too! Just click the reply button....
Love and prayers from,
Will and Phyllis Hunsucker
with Jaan, Raia, Asya, and Bogdan