Dear Friend,

Well, 2012 seems to be off to a good start! We have been busy this month! We began the New Year with a walk around a lake not far from Carlisle with our church. It was nice to fellowship and celebrate the New Year with the body of Christ! Many of our evenings have been spent reading pregnancy and parenting books!

Chrysti's Work
My (Chrysti’s) work on the Sunday school materials has kind of slowed down since the Christmas holidays. It is beginning to pick up with our desire to finish the current pack for the public schools before we start our new project (and before two of us have babies in March!). There are just a few more details to be ironed out before we can release this pack.
 
I have been taking driving lessons once a week in hopes of getting my UK driving licence before “Little Bump” arrives in March. They have been going well. I’ve been getting more comfortable on the roads in England (other side of the road, other side of the car). I passed my theory (written) test a couple of weeks ago. Last week I took a practise test that revealed a few things that I still need to work on. However, my instructor seems confident that I’ll be able to get my licence before the baby arrives.

Leon's Work
I (Leon) have a number of technical projects that I am waiting to implement for OM. I have setup a reverse proxy server for OM’s extranet which will allow our missionaries to access it from Create Access Nations in a much better way than they currently do. It will also reduce the workload for our extranet developers who need to code every page twice because of our existing proxy solution
 
I am nearly finished upgrading the software for OM’s internal wiki. The new version will make it much easier for people to edit it. I had to do extensive CSS updates to make the new version work.
 
Last week Friday we learned that we will need to switch our spam filtering solution because the company we currently use is leaving the market in 60 days. We had already been investigating other solutions, but it does apply more pressure to make the decision quick for a new solution. We are hoping to use this as a greater leverage to move people off their old email address and use their first.last@om.org address. We saw a drastic decrease last month for email sent to the previous email addresses, which is a huge praise report.
 
Finally, I am working to get the last email lists, All News and All Prayer, off Yahoo! Groups to our in-house solution. These lists don’t actually go to all people in OM. The new solution we will make it possible for everyone in OM to subscribe/unsubscribe themselves.
 
I have been very busy and am enjoying it.

Life in Carlisle
We are now finding that we can’t attend home group much because of antenatal (prenatal) classes starting next week and then who knows when the baby will come. We feel that at this season in our life that we cannot become too involved in church activities as much as we desire to do that. We know that the next season of our life—having a baby—will open many doors in evangelising the community.
 
This means we can struggle to focus outwardly on our community now that we are getting ready for the baby. Much of our energy is put towards preparing as much as possible to be good parents. We still practice hospitality and try to have someone around for a meal each week. I (Leon) have not been able to play Ultimate Frisbee much, because the group is playing on Sunday afternoons when I am usually busy with hospitality.

Visitors from Calvin College
The last two weeks have been more lively than usual in the OM office. We’ve had 8 students and their professor from Calvin College visiting for an internship with the IT department. They spent their time doing some computer programming on the OpenPetra project.
 
Leon and I had the opportunity to get to know the students while they’ve been here. We had a group around to our house for dinner a couple of times. We also got to take them on a tour of Edinburgh one weekend (last year we took students from Taylor University to Keswick.) Upon our return, many said Edinburgh was the highlight of their trip so far!
 
As a sending-off party, the OM team hosted a Robbie Burns night for the students last week. The night was a meal to celebrate the life of poet Robert Burns. We all enjoyed partaking in the Scottish tradition, although not all of us chose to have haggis for dinner!

Getting ready for baby
We have been busily getting ready for “Little Bump’s” arrival! Earlier this month, Leon painted the room that will be used for the nursery. We’ve been slowly collecting baby stuff. It’s exciting to see things coming together as my (Chrysti’s) due date gets closer and closer. We will hopefully be getting some more things over the next couple of weeks: a couple of ladies on the OM team are hosting a baby shower for me.
In fact, a number of people in the US have asked us how to send us gifts for the baby and also what we need. I’ve put together a wish list through Amazon.co.uk (It works similarly to our wedding registry). We can’t remember who asked for our wish list, so for those that asked, now you have it.