Author name: Lois Gillespie

By this time in December, many of us have received so many Christmas cards and newsletters, not to mention that we?re SO busy, most will go unread, at least until after Christmas when things calm down a little. That?s one of the reasons we?re shocking you with that dreaded offensive ?Happy Holidays? ? to capture your interest in our newsletter. I mean, after all, we really don?t write that often these days.

But seriously, Happy Holidays! Because the phrase has become fighting words for so many, it has caused us to think about what it means. It is true that to some, it is used in an effort to be politically correct and not offend others who may not believe in the Baby in the manger. In other cases, the phrase is used in a deliberate attempt to remove all references of Christ and the religious overtones from Christmas. It?s no longer enough to change the spelling of ?Christmas? to ?Xmas?; after all, everyone knows the correct spelling of Christmas. Whether or not they worship the Christ of Christmas, they are reminded every time they see ?Christmas? ? or ?Xmas? ? that there is more to this holiday than what the world would make of it, leaving them once again ?without excuse?.

So why are we wishing you ?Happy Holidays?? It?s because we want to ?bring you into remembrance? of how special it is to count our blessings during the Thanksgiving season (even though we?re a bit late), to sincerely offer you the “peace…that passeth all understanding” given to us by the Christ of Christmas, and to ?provoke you (and us) unto love and to good works? during the coming year of 2006. These truly are ?Happy Holidays?. We don?t want to let those outside the knowledge of God affect what we know about the true meaning of Christmas ? and Thanksgiving and the New Year. From the bottom of our hearts, we once again wish you ?Happy Holidays?.

The year 2005 has been special for us. We?re spending lots of time with the next generation of the Gillespie family, Summer Dawn Kinnard, born on November 7, 2005. You can see pictures of her (and the rest of the family) by visiting our photo page. We’ve also been blessed by time spent renewing friendships with many of you and meeting new friends, too. We are rejoicing that just this week we received word from two different churches of new financial support, and we?re truly expecting that we?ll hear similar news from more of you in the new year. Because of this, we?re continuing to plan for our return to West Africa in Spring 2006.

God is good all the time; all the time God is good. This week was an especially good week for the Gillespie family.

On Monday, while our son David was being sworn in as an attorney in Columbus, Ohio, his niece (our first grandchild) decided that Nov. 7th was a good day for her birthday. Summer Dawn was born to Brian and Gina Kinnard at 10:24 pm, weighing 6 lb. 1 oz. and being 19.5 in. tall. Of course, she is absolutely beautiful and very precious. We’re all in love with her! We’re including a picture so that you can agree with us.

A special part of this is that Lois was able to be present at the birth. We were in the middle of a missions conference in Norwalk, Ohio, a little more than half an hour from the Mansfield hospital. Tuesday evening, as we shared our ministry of Training the Next Generation, we were able to share these pictures of the next generation in the Gillespie family. We are so grateful to be here on home assignment for this very special time.

Thank you for your prayers for us. Please pray for our friends and supporters as they are making new support decisions for the coming year. We want to return to the field in the spring and can only do so as God supplies our support needs through His people.

As I’m writing this update, Bob is up on the housetop, putting the finishing touches on our new roof. We were so blessed by the friends from our home church who gave up a Saturday to help us with this project. There are a few more major projects and lots of finishing touches to be completed on our little house in Loudonville, but we really enjoy having a place to call “home” once again – even if for a short time.

So many of you are asking “How’s the new hip?” After just 10 ? weeks, I can gladly say that my new titanium part and I are getting along just great. Most of the time I forget it’s there which is how it?s supposed to be!

We recently had the privilege of attending state meetings in both West Virginia and Ohio. Not only were we blessed by the sharing of the Word, but our hearts were blessed once again by our contact with so many of our faithful friends and supporters. We were reminded once again how very special all of you are to us.

In our contacts with some of God’s servants from our churches, we sometimes receive apologies that their church family cannot support us. We want you to know that in our journey of “friend finding”, we aren’t only looking for financial support. We are looking for God’s prayer warriors; we firmly believe that you are more important to us than our financial support. In fact, with you taking our need for support to the throne, we are sure that God will supply our need in His time. Please don’t apologize that all you can do is pray.

Most of you know that we were hoping to return to West Africa in January. At this point, we don’t have the support we need to return that soon, so we’re moving our departure plans up to the late spring. Because of that, we have more Sundays available to come and share with our church friends – new and old – about some of God’s blessings in West Africa during our last term and about where we believe He wants to use us during our next term.

Sometimes when I re-read my updates before sending them out, I realize I’ve used the word “blessed” or “blessing” too many times. Truthfully, there’s no other way to phrase how we feel when we reflect on God and how He chooses to work in our lives. Thank you, dear friends, for being a part of this blessed feeling.