YouTube-Based Daily Devotional Created by Episcopal Young Adults of Western Washington

During Lent I am using my blog to host a special project created by Episcopal Adults of Western Washington: a YouTube-based Lenten daily devotional.

If you know any folks ages 18-35 who have a connection to the Episcopal Church in Western Washington (be it ever so tenuous, even), please spread the word; we can use as many submissions as people send us!

Here's how to send something in:

1) Go through your favorite songs and find one that is, for you, a light in a dark place … a promise of hope in the midst of hopelessness.
2) Find your song on YouTube and copy out the URL.
3) Write your story of what the song means to you and why. It can be a few sentences or a few paragraphs. Be sure to respect people’s confidentiality where appropriate.
4) Say a prayer of gratitude.
5) Email your story and YouTube link to josh.hosler@gmail.com.
6) Invite another Episcopal young adult to do the same.
7) Want to do another one? Send multiple submissions! I can certainly use several of yours.
8) I will post the results, one per day, throughout Lent.
9) If you are over 35 (as I am), please refrain from submitting something. Rather, enjoy the submissions of those who are younger than you are. And if you are just burning to talk about a song, share it personally with someone under 35 just for the joy of it.
10) Due date for submissions is NOW. Have fun!

What Kills You Makes You Stronger

Kelly Clarkson’s current #1 song is called “Stronger”; its catchy hook revolves around that common but somewhat peculiar phrase, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

This song has recently come to the attention of my daughter Sarah. We were discussing it over dinner the other night, and I joked about a line from the TV show Modern Family, in which the character Manny points out that this phrase simply isn’t true: “Many diseases leave people permanently disabled without killing them.” It’s a comic line in the show, but it’s a good point. Many of our common phrases, while they may have some basis in truth, aren’t at all universally applicable.

Then Sarah said, “What about Star Wars? Obi-Wan Kenobi said, ‘If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.’ And that was true!” I smiled, because I remember my parents comparing Obi-Wan Kenobi to Jesus when I was Sarah's age. (I don't know if she has made that connection yet, but I'll let her put it together herself.)

Sarah helped me understand that this common phrase has it backward. From a Star Wars perspective—and, by extension, from a Christian perspective—the phrase should be “What kills you makes you stronger.” You can’t get to resurrection without going through death first. To cast it in another mythological image, the phoenix rises from the ashes—not from a third-degree burn.

“What kills you makes you stronger.” This doesn’t need to refer merely to bodily death. Every day somebody’s hopes fail, something precious ends, and life goes on, with God always creating new possibilities we just can’t imagine yet. The death of anything we love really, truly, deeply hurts. But it's not the end.

This is why the Christian call is never to give up on anybody, ever, no matter what—and never to give up on our own lives, either. Even when we, in our fallibility, give up, God does not. God keeps hoping; the Holy Spirit prays the prayers we cannot.

Where Is God When Isaac's Birth Is Announced? An Exegesis of Genesis 18:1-15

By way of showing all of you back home what I'm working on these days, I'll share an exegesis I wrote recently. But wait ... what the heck is an "exegesis"? Simply put, it's a very close reading and interpretation of a particular passage of Scripture. Enjoy.

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He Qi, Abraham and Three Angels

“The LORD appeared to Christy and Josh in the second of Josh’s two apartments on 19th Avenue, as they sat on his bed reading a book to each other at the end of a long, enjoyable Thanksgiving weekend.” If my own life were sacred scripture, these words could begin the story of a direct encounter with God that changed everything. In Genesis 18:1-15, we have just that sort of story—a theophany—that changes everything for Abraham and Sarah. While God has communicated directly with Abraham several times before now, this story is especially about Sarah. It is the annunciation of the birth of her son. Paralleled in chapter 17, this is the fulfillment of the promise first made to Abraham in chapter 12. Encounters with God are typically both mysterious and unsettling, and that is certainly the case for Sarah here. Fear is the only emotion mentioned in the entire passage. Furthermore, we are left not quite understanding the physical location of God. While it is fair to conclude that God is present in at least one of the three strangers, the story intentionally dodges every attempt to confine God’s presence to a single place.

By this point in the Genesis narrative, God has given the same promise to Abraham four times: He will make of him a great nation that will bless all the peoples of the world. The promise appears in chapters 12, 13 and 15, as if a funnel of divine pronouncements is moving us inexorably toward the promise’s fulfillment. In chapter 17, which just precedes this passage, the fourth occurrence of the promise is paired with an announcement to Abraham of Isaac’s pending birth. In that story, Abraham laughs so hard he falls on his face (Gen. 17:17). But we must not approach chapter 18—a “J”-source story—as if Abraham already knows this news, for chapter 17 comes from the “P” source, a later tradition. Walter Brueggemann writes: “[Genesis 18:1-15] belongs to an earlier stream of tradition [than the preceding chapter] with some affinities to chapter 16.”[1]  As chapter 18 begins, Abraham and Sarah are anticipating the fulfillment of God’s promise but have no idea yet how it will come about.

“The LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day” (Gen. 18:1, NRSV). Verse 1 is an introduction to the story, and it lets the reader in on the secret of the three strangers who appear in verse 2: “He looked up and saw three men standing near him.” Does Abraham understand immediately the divine nature of his guests? The only possible evidence for this might be Abraham’s effusive welcome. The next several verses are marked by two goals: Abraham must provide absolutely the best hospitality for these three men, and he must do it as quickly as possible. But David M. Carr describes this as “a description of the ideal hospitality of Abraham parallel to that of Lot in 19:1-11.”[2]  Perhaps Abraham is the kind of man who would provide extravagant hospitality to any and all strangers. Perhaps this is one reason God has chosen him.

In verse 3, the Common English Version has Abraham addressing the men as “Sirs,” but this is not true to the Hebrew. According to Nahum Sarna, “The verbs in verse 3 are in the singular, indicating that only one of the three strangers is spoken to, whereas those in verses 4-5 are in the plural … Abraham addresses himself to the leader but … his invitation applies to all three.”[3]  More importantly, the vocative word Abraham uses is יאֲדֹנָ, “my lord,” and it is rendered in this lowercase way in the NRSV, the NIV, and the NJB. This is the same word that is spoken in place of the tetragrammaton יְהוָה, but it is also used both in the generic sense to address a human superior, and to address God in the uppercase, as Abraham does in Gen. 15:2 and at other times. Sarna continues: "Rashi and Ibn Ezra understand it to mean ‘My lords’; Maimonides renders it ‘My Lord.’ Since it is clear that the patriarch at this point is unaware of the true identity of the strangers, the present vocalization serves as an indication to the reader that the three ‘men’ are no ordinary wayfarers.”[4]

The reader knows that YHWH is present, if not yet revealed, and this creates a dilemma, especially for illustrators and those who might attempt a paraphrase. How are we to imagine these three strangers? Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s storybook for children provides three winged angels, standing tightly together, facing a visibly terrified Abraham and Sarah: “‘We are angels sent by God,’ the visitors said. ‘When we return, Sarah will have a son.’”[5]  For Tutu, YHWH Himself is not present, but has sent three emissaries—an interpretation that skirts the issue of drawing a picture of God at all. On the other hand, in his Godly Play children’s curriculum, Jerome Berryman places a special focus on our inability to confine God’s presence in this story. While wooden figures are used to represent Abraham and Sarah, Berryman specifically advises the storyteller: “You don’t need to put any figures down for the strangers. Leave them mysterious.”[6]

Abraham serves his guests and stands nearby while they eat. No mention is made of Abraham serving them the bread he has requested from Sarah. Perhaps it is still baking. At any rate, Sarah does not emerge from the tent at all during this episode. In verse 9, the strangers address Abraham again, this time seemingly in unison: “Where is your wife Sarah?” Abraham replies that she is in the tent. No doubt Sarah’s ears perk up at the mention of her name. How could the strangers possibly know of her? Terence E. Fretheim suggests, “The question in v. 9 ensures Sarah is within earshot of what will be said; the narrator states (v. 10) that she listens ‘off camera.’”[7]

Suddenly only one person is speaking: “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” The Hebrew pronoun is “he,” but many translations render it “one said,” or “one of them said,” to emphasize the change from plural to singular. The NIV jumps the gun and treats this speaker as YHWH, but this shift has not yet occurred in the received text.

The narrator tells us that Sarah “was listening at the tent entrance behind him.” Behind whom? E.A. Speiser writes: “‘He/it was behind him/it’ … is far from clear. [The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint] read the first pronoun as feminine; this would mean that Sarah was not far from the speaker; in Heb., however, the pronominal suffix at the end is more likely to refer either to the tent or the entrance, so that the received version is to be preferred.”[8]

In other words, the opening of the tent is just behind the speaker. Perhaps the tent is set up under the same tree where the three strangers are eating their meal. Somehow, the speaker has come between Abraham and Sarah.

In verse 12, Sarah laughs to herself, amused at the impossibility of this announcement. It is at precisely this point that YHWH definitively enters the scene, marked by the tetragrammaton, asking Abraham why Sarah laughed. YHWH reiterates what the stranger said before: “I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son” (v. 14). If the speaker is the one who turns out to be YHWH, and if indeed he is standing right by the tent entrance, he may actually be standing closer to Sarah than he is to Abraham, with only the tent fabric separating them. The divine ears have no trouble apprehending Sarah’s chuckle.

Next, in the most personal moment of the story, Sarah denies that she laughed (v. 15). I can certainly relate to the “it wasn’t me” impulse. All of us have had an experience of being caught red-handed and denying the facts in total disregard of overwhelming evidence against us. We know the motivator is fear, but that emotion is spelled out for us here: “for she was afraid.” Is this the moment when Sarah understands it is YHWH speaking? Perhaps this is why the narrator has made the stranger’s identity clear to us. When YHWH replies, “Oh yes, you did laugh,” these words are not merely spoken through a tent flap by a strange man.

Augustine of Hippo would someday remark on his own experience: “You were more inward than my inmost self, and superior to my highest being.”[9]  We can imagine for ourselves whether YHWH’s intent was to shame Sarah, or to call her back to faith in a jesting way. But I believe that Sarah felt YHWH was right there in the tent with her. One parallel moment—with markedly less subtlety—is Job 38:1, when YHWH suddenly answers Job “out of the whirlwind” (NRSV). In that case, YHWH swoops in, and Job’s reaction is finally to stop talking and listen. In Sarah’s case, YHWH seems to have sneaked into the tent while she was baking and eavesdropping. Now there can be no more denying the divine presence, and that presence naturally evokes fear. Abraham was already coming to realize that God cannot be confined to one place. Now Sarah has her own experience of the omnipresence of YHWH.

Richard J. Clifford writes of this passage: “The fluidity of actors in the scene is a narrative means of describing both the nearness and the mysterious elusiveness of God.”[10]  YHWH is so all-encompassing that we cannot even limit Him to the constructs of “singular” and “plural.” At the same time, God is near enough to appear as a guest seeking a bite to eat before resuming his journey.

“The LORD appeared to Christy and Josh in the second of Josh’s two apartments on 19th Avenue, as they sat on his bed reading a book to each other at the end of a long, enjoyable Thanksgiving weekend.” In our case, YHWH appeared as a not-quite-visible mist, enveloping us and giving us the familiar words spoken throughout the Bible by God and by angels: “Be not afraid.” In our case, the message continued: “Get married, and await further instructions.” We were called from fear to faith one step at a time. In the same way, Sarah was called out of her fear into a new life that would require all the faith God would grant her.

1  Walter Brueggemann, Genesis: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), 157.
 2 David M. Carr, Commentary on Genesis in The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Augmented Third Edition, New Revised Standard Version (ed. Michael D. Coogan; Oxford: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2007), 35.
 3 Nahum M. Sarna, JPS (Jewish Publication Society) Commentary: Genesis (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 128.
 4 Ibid.
 5 Bishop Desmond Tutu, Children of God Storybook Bible (Grand Rapids: Zonderkidz, 2010), 20.
 6 Jerome Berryman, The Complete Guide to Godly Play, Volume 2 (Denver: Living the Good News, 2002), 62.
 7 Terence E. Fretheim, “God Visits Abraham and Sarah,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible (ed. Leander E. Keck, et al.; Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 463.
 8 E.A. Speiser, The Anchor Bible: Genesis (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964), 130.
 9 The Confessions of St. Augustine (translated by John K. Ryan; New York: Doubleday, 1960), 84.
 10 Richard J. Clifford, S.J., “Genesis,” in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (ed. Raymond E. Brown, S.S.; Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990), 22.

Back to School

Here's a current picture of Sarah. For all of you who were excited to watch her grow up on the internet over the next three years, you'll be dismayed to learn that she has hit a camera-shy phase.

Sarah may be camera-shy, but we were just given a hand-me-down kids' digital camera for her, so you may start seeing some of her photos here ... like this one, of a scene from the kids' game show she and I like to watch together, "Fetch!" (Expect better photos when the weather warms up and we can get some natural light into the camera.)

Actually, the title of this blog is misleading. I have been in school for the past two weeks, taking week-long intensive classes on writing and structuring curriculum. It's a lot more interesting than it sounds. I even got to create my own pre-baptism curriculum for parents and godparents, which may get published on the Web somewhere soon; I'll let you know. But as of now, with that assignment emailed in, January term is over.

The spring semester begins on Monday. This quarter I will continue Church History, Old Testament, and Hebrew, while adding a class on Youth Ministry. ALL FOUR CLASSES meet for the first time this Monday. Yikes!

Already I can feel the panicked tug of that little voice saying, "You don't have time to do all this and still do it justice."

"OK, little voice," I reply. "Then I will either do it all, and not do it justice, or I will do most of it pretty well. Last semester worked out fine, and this semester will, too."

See? Perfectionist in recovery. It's easy to say NOW ... before things have really gotten rolling, and I can't sleep at night, or I wake up at 3:30 a.m.

Actually, the thing I'm looking forward to most is the February Conference on Ministry, which is a high-falutin' way of saying "prospective students weekend." I've always been enamored of newcomers and potential newcomers in every situation, so I'll be right there in the cheering section, showing people around and encouraging them to come to VTS.

Included in that weekend is the big Variety Show. Now, I'll be honest: When Christy and I visited VTS two years ago, it was the Variety Show that really clinched it for me. This is a student body that knows how to have fun. Among many other things, a game show called Episcopal Idol and a Madonna spoof called "Episcopal Girl" made that year's show fantabulous. And this year, I get to contribute something myself, with the help of a few friends. Mwa-ha-ha-ha!!!

I don't think I blogged about this, but in November, we had a variety show just for ourselves ... no prospective students. Inspired by a recent trend in some churches to render the Eucharistic prayer into Dr. Seuss-ian rhyme (and yes, to channel Dave Barry, I SWEAR I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP), a few of us called in the Spanish Inquisition to do away with these heretics.

Church Went to Me

I went to church today. Or, rather, church went to me. The thing is, I didn’t expect to find myself at church … but there I was. No, I didn’t wander unsuspectingly into the National Cathedral for its observance of the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., though that would have been a great thing to do.

Instead, I found myself at the Smithsonian American History Museum, where my family and I listened to a young man reading passages from some of Dr. King’s speeches. He opened by singing “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.” A few of us in the crowd sang along. Then he gave a brief biography of Dr. King, interspersed with recitations from his speeches and, sometimes, recordings of speeches punctuated with applause. Interestingly, after applauding for “Precious Lord,” nobody in the multi-generational, multi-racial crowd applauded the speeches. It was as if these speeches were holy—you know, the way we don’t applaud in church because we’re participating in a sacrament. It was like that with Dr. King’s speeches today.

After recounting the bus strike and the actions that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the young man went on to talk about Dr. King’s commitment to nonviolence and his opposition to the war in Vietnam. He noted that it was at this point that fewer people found themselves able to get on board with Dr. King’s agenda—to be opposed to war, even on Christian principles, was simply going too far. And then, we got up to April 4, 1968.

I wasn’t born yet in 1968, but my own family has stories about the day. My mother remembers holding her roommate from Zaire while the young woman sobbed. They were both wearing shorts that warm spring day. In that moment, my mother hated the color of her skin and wished she could change it for the sake of her friend.

The young man read a selection from Dr. King’s final speech, and then he invited us all to stand, join hands with our neighbors, and sing “We Shall Overcome.” I looked over and found a young black girl standing next to me—she might have been about eight years old. She didn’t hesitate to take my hand while we sang. I looked down and her little sister, on the other side of her, was smiling up at me.

I remembered that on the train on the way downtown today, Sarah had shyly caught the attention of a black sister and brother about her age. She had tried to make friends with them. The hesitation on her part and theirs was merely the hesitation of strangers who have not yet become friends; there wasn’t the slightest overtone of racial suspicion on the children’s part or on the part of their mother, who smiled at us while our children attempted a short-lived friendship. By the time we got off the train, our two families were chatting away like old friends, just for a few minutes while we rode the escalator together and then parted ways. So later, as I stood there in the museum that had become a church, I prayed, “Yes, this is it. This is the dream. Sometimes it’s really here, Martin. God bless you for your life and your sacrifice.” There is no doubt in my mind that Dr. King's dream and God's dream overlap almost completely.

After that we all walked to the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. We had a general idea where it was, but we didn’t have to ask directions; we just followed the multicolored crowd of people as they made their way on this brief, holy pilgrimage past the Washington Monument, past the World War II memorial, to the place where Dr. King’s profile has been carved out of stone.

My photo here captures the misquote that I understand will soon be corrected (see this article to learn more). But indeed, whether or not Dr. King would like to have seen it written in stone, he “was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.” And as President Obama reminded us today, so can we all be. All of us.

We strolled past the many quotes of Dr. King's that are carved into the wall there. I thought, "My God, we're still not listening, are we? Most of these ideas are too difficult for us to handle." Imagine an America that chooses not to win at everything, but rather, to work hard to foster peace. Imagine a world in which war is simply not an acceptable way of accomplishing anything. Can you imagine it?

Amen.

Our lives are the curriculum

Here’s a shot of Sarah on her new bed, a hand-me-down from one of my professors. I tell you, hand-me-down Christmas gifts are the best way to go when you’re in seminary! The wall hanging was a gift from Sarah's grandparents and Aunt Suzy. They've added a felt line that details our road trip from Seattle to Washington, D.C., including markers for all the places we spent the night.

At Virginia Theological Seminary, January term moves at a very different pace from the regular semester. Each week we have an opportunity to take one single class and really dig into it. Some classes are more than one week long. I have chosen to take two consecutive one-week classes that build on each other. The first is “Curriculum: Practices of a People.” The second is “Curriculum Development and Technique.”

Now, if you don’t hold a teaching certificate, these class titles may seem a little dull. But the entire point is that we can expand the definition of curriculum to talk about … well, nearly everything in life. We are always learning, and it’s the role of the teacher not only to provide facts and theories on paper, but also to help students connect the material with their everyday lives. Our lives themselves are the curriculum.

Spring semester will begin at the end of January, at which point I will resume Church History, Old Testament and Hebrew. I’ll also add a semester-long course called Constructions of Youth and Youth Ministry.

I have had two big realizations lately. The first is that I wish I could have had all these classes before I spent seven years as an Associate for Christian Formation! There are plenty of things I would have handled more methodically … and perhaps there are many more that I would have handled less methodically and with more creativity.

The second is a simple but very deep sense of gratitude. I am so happy to be here. It hasn’t been easy for my family, but they’re doing fine. Many mornings, I wake up energized because I’m excited to be in seminary. It doesn’t get much better than this. Again, friends, thank you all for everything you’ve done and continue to do to support us.

the revealing: music for epiphany

Here's some music for the season of Epiphany, which began on Friday and continues well into February. During this season, we focus on Jesus the human being: his birth, his coming of age, and the qualities of his ministry. I've arranged the music for this season by theme as follows:

Suite 1: Incarnation. Enjoy the Baby Jesus just a little longer, as the Magi did.

Suite 2: Baptism. Today (January 8) is the feast of Jesus' baptism, marking the beginning of his ministry. These songs are meant to evoke images of water and of the light of heaven breaking through and anointing Jesus as the Messiah.

Suite 3: Calling. Just as Jesus called disciples, he calls us, too. What is the shape of your call?

Suite 4: Fishing. We are called not just to be disciples, but to be apostles, sent out into the world with Good News.

Suite 5: Teaching. At the heart of Jesus' teaching was one very important concept: love.

Suite 6: Healing. Wherever Jesus went, he came close to people and healed them. Sometimes this meant curing them of their diseases as well.

Suite 7: Praise. The people came to adore Jesus profoundly.

Suite 8: Transfiguration. Many of the people wanted Jesus to become a powerful earthly ruler. But God had different plans, and the Transfiguration on the mountaintop marks the shift from Jesus' early ministry to the much more somber second half, as Jesus prepared to set his face toward Jerusalem and the Cross.

At various places in the suites, I have worked in the three movements of Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, my favorite choral piece ever. These three pieces are sung in Hebrew, and I hope they are effective at tying in Jesus' Judaism and his grounding in the Psalms.

Please: If you like something you hear, go buy it!

Happy Epiphany from the Hoslers!

January 6, 2012

Dear friends and family:

Happy Epiphany from the Hoslers! We neglected to write an annual letter last year, so we have much to catch up on. In 2010, Josh was accepted as a postulant to the Episcopal priesthood, and we also decided that year that we would move to Virginia so Josh could attend seminary. So the early part of 2011 was full of projects and preparations: getting our West Seattle home up to snuff so it could be leased out, downsizing our possessions, and saying goodbye to many friends and family. We also said goodbye to our beloved cat Epitome, who died in March at the ripe old age of 15. Henry, at age 10, is still with us, although he has already stepped into the newly vacant role of “crotchety old grump.”

At the end of May, Christy completed her full-time contract job with Expedia and started some serious packing and house-cleaning. Josh’s job at St. Thomas continued for a month longer, and Sarah graduated from kindergarten in June as well. Our final weeks in Seattle were marked by celebrations: a very touching fundraising dinner at St. Thomas, a final chance for Josh to preach there and to say goodbye to his youth group, an early birthday party for Sarah, and a visit from Josh’s parents, who helped us pack all our remaining belongings and get them onto the moving van.

We hit the road July 21, and we chronicled our epic eleven-day road trip on Josh’s blog. Highlights included a visit with Christy’s friend Leanne in Oregon; two nights’ stay in Josh’s old hometown of Rupert, Idaho, including a reunion with his best childhood friend, Travis Freeman; crossing the Continental Divide in a Honda Civic as it puffed “I think I can”; a visit to the fantastic science museum in Denver; Sarah making great strides in her swimming abilities in hotel swimming pools; a flat tire in Topeka; Sarah losing her first tooth in St. Louis while we were out to dinner with our friend Angela; and finally, a few nights’ stay in Annandale, VA, at the home of our friends the Hoskinses, while we waited for the moving van to arrive.

August was all about adjusting to life in our two-bedroom apartment … and to a very different climate. Heat and humidity marked our first month, but that’s not all: we experienced both an earthquake and a hurricane! We did get to see both the Washington Monument and the National Cathedral before the earthquake; both were closed immediately afterward for extensive repairs. In the months that followed, we have also visited the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, the American History Museum, and the National Museum of the American Indian.

Also in August, Josh began classes, along with 45 other M.Div. students. So far he has taken Church History, Old Testament, Hebrew, and a couple classes in pastoral care and practical theology. He has joined the seminary choir, volunteered as a hospice chaplain, helped the seminary with a Lilly-funded research project, and visited a number of different Episcopal churches in order to scout out an eventual site for his field education (which will begin next fall). His main impression of his fellow students is that they are amazing: all of them are very accomplished people with a huge variety of gifts, and he’s eagerly learning from them as well as from his classes and professors.

After Labor Day, Sarah started at Douglas MacArthur Elementary School, a large public school with six different first-grade classes and solid music, art, and gym programs. Every morning she waits for the bus with other seminarians’ kids, and she has also made new friends from the population at large. Her favorite subject is math, and her reading is coming along well. Sarah has also joined the children’s choir at Church of the Holy Cross in Dunn Loring, VA, where she also enjoys weekly Godly Play stories. In December she played both an angel and a donkey in a musical Christmas pageant called “Angels Aware!”

At the end of September, Christy began a full-time position at the Cokesbury book store on campus. She was looking forward to getting in-depth retail training from the store manager, so it was something of a shock when he immediately left to take another job. After just ten days of training, Christy was surprised to find herself the only full-time employee at the store! In a few short months, she has learned a lot about receiving merchandise and ordering textbooks, and she struggles valiantly with the store’s ancient, DOS-based inventory system.

At both Thanksgiving and Christmas, we all journeyed to Ridgefield, Connecticut, to spend the holidays with Christy’s sister Patty and her family. Sarah was in paradise, with three cousins near her age to play with all day long. Christmas was particularly special because Christy’s parents and sister Sue flew out from Seattle to join us. After Christmas Day, Brian and Debbie came down to spend a week in Alexandria with us. During their visit, we ate at Gadsby’s Tavern, which was frequented by our nation’s first five presidents, and we visited Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington’s family.

As 2012 begins, we are very thankful for all the new friends who have welcomed us to Virginia and to all those we love back home in the Seattle area who continue to support us on this grand adventure!

With much love and best wishes for a great new year,

Josh, Christy & Sarah Hosler