Pre-Christmas Greetings

It's been a busy few weeks and I apologize for taking so long to give an update. Our Christmas letter is nearly done so I will get that out soon. In the mean time, updates on our family! A couple of weeks ago Becca had her D.A.R.E graduation. She placed first for the essay contest and was very pleased with the effort she put forth. We are very proud of her as well.

Our church Christmas party was this past Friday. It was well attended and everyone had a great time. As White Elephant Gift Exchanges go, there were a couple of "hot" gifts that kept going around and around and around some more. We played as LTCC youth does, limiting the exchange to 3 steals per round, then it's on again for the next round. Much more fun that way!

Sunday was the children's Christmas Play. Two weeks ago I wasn't so sure they'd pull it together, but the kids did great! Some have already asked if we can "do that again next year." Hmmm....let's finish this year first.

Now it's on to VBS prep. I can't wait. I got my kit last week and it is sheer will power keeping me from diving in before the new year. I did peek at it, then put it all back in the box. I think I need to go put it out in the church tomorrow. The temptation to dig in is getting to me! Yes, I love VBS and can't wait.

We are looking forward to having Butch's mom spend Christmas with us. She arrives Saturday and will stay until the following Friday. I guess I better get cleaning. We had a great snowfall last week, but it melted rather quickly. Our family was headed into Fallon that day for dentist appointments and the kids didn't even get to play in it. I got some fun pictures when we stopped for a potty break in Austin. Normally 1 hour away, but that day it took 2. They had at least a foot of snow!

Well, I will get that newsletter done and posted in the next day or two. We'd love to hear from you, whether you comment on here or send us an e-mail.

Serving Him,

The Hallenbeck's

Thansgiving Surprise

We had a wonderful time keeping secrets before Thanksgiving. The "friends" we looked forward to spending the day with were really our family! My mom and Butch's sister knew we were coming to Washington for Thanskgiving but no one else did. Oh it's so much fun to surprise people!!!!

On Thanskgiving day we sat in the car at Butch's sister's while he called his mom, who was inside, to wish her a happy Thanksgiving. We sent the kids in, when Butch asked her if she wanted to to talk to them, he told her to look around, she might be able to find them. I wish I could have seen her face. Priceless I'm sure.

We had a wonderful time and came home feeling a bit tired but rested as well. It took us about 20 hours to drive up. Coming home we spent the night in Medford, OR and drove the rest of the way Monday. We got home Monday night about 9:30.

It was nice to see our families and to see friends too. We surprised everyone at church Sunday. That was fun too because they didn't know we were coming and a lot of people said good morning first, then realized who they said good morning too. I think a few people might have gotten whiplash!

Movie night is tonight so I'm off to make popcorn. It's takes a long time to make enough but it sure is worth it. In the words of Mr. Food, "It's oh, so good"

Have a blessed weekend.

Jen

Happy Thanksgiving

Greetings Family and Friends

As we enter this week of Thanksgiving, I have much to thank God for. First of all I thank Him for allowing our family to serve Him in this beautiful place we call "The Middle-of-Nowhere" Nevada. I thank Him for our church family and for my husband and kids. I thank Him for the little blessings we receive each day through friends and even strangers. I thank Him for our family back home in Washington. I thank Him for all of you who are praying for us and supporting us finanacially, this is your ministry too. God is good, all the time.

This past Sunday we were hanging out after church and Butch noticed that he was seeing eye to eye with Spencer. So...we got out the pencil, stood everyone up against the wall and measured. ALL of us. What we found out is this...Butch isn't as tall as he used to be, but is currently still the tallest. I am an inch shorter than him. Spencer has only 1/4 of an inch to catch up with me. Grady is about an inch behind him. And Becca, she's still the shortest and the youngest:) Ha Ha, I think she'll have that one for life! She's shorter than I was at 10, must come from Butch's side of the family. In all our findings I see a scrapbook page developing. Maybe I'll get a chance to work on it this week and post it!

We are looking forward to Turkey Day and feasting with friends once again this year. More about that later. Last week we had a Church Family Thanksgiving Dinner at the community center. We had a good turnout with 58 people attending. It was nice to see some new faces. My mind is already moving on fast forward to December and all the events scheduled at the church. Once again we will have a Christmas Party and this year we are doing a Christmas Play. Pray for that one, I have lots of help so we should be able to pull it together!

Wishing you all a Wonderful Thanksgiving.

Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift. 2 Corinthians 9:15

Halloween Pictures

I finally got a chance to post a few pictures from Halloween. I told the kids I wouldn't spend any money on costumes so if they wanted to dress up, they had to come up with the idea on there own and it had to be free. Here's what they came up with...

Becca is a box of Kleenex.

Grady is a Rubik's Cube. (I think he knows what a Rubik's Cube is)

I don't know if Spencer decided what he was. He's got a sword so maybe a knight?????

Trunk-or-Treat

Hey all

Trunk-or-Treat was tonight. We had a great turnout. It's hard to say what the exact count was but we estimate that there was probably about 60+ kids that came. We figure we had over 100 people total. That's about double last year, which is what we were praying for. God is good.

Butch had the camera tonight and he doesn't take near as many pictures as me, but I'll post some in the next couple of days.

The other praise for tonight was the weather. We had all the games outside this year so we didn't have to take down the chairs. The wind stayed away and it didn't get super cold. After our early snow I wasn't sure what it would do. We had coffee and hot chocolate, which we went through a lot of, plus we had a roasting fire so people were able to warm up if they did get chilled. Surprisingly, we went through more hot dogs than s'mores. Go figure!

Thanks for your prayers for Trunk-or-Treat. The Lord blessed this event and the community is becoming more aware that we are here and reaching to them. We had quite a few unchurched families come and some that are on the fringes. Pray that we will continue to be able to continue to reach out to these families.

Amazing Sunday

Wow. Today was an amazing day. Have you had one of those? I was a little bit weary when Butch came in at 10:00 last night and said I needed to change the closing song. Of course my first thought was "what about the rest of the songs?" He generally tells me what the main idea of his message will be and I let God take the lead and choose the songs He puts on my heart. So I'm thinking, "How will these songs fit with a message that God gave to Butch at 9:00 Saturday night, completely different from the message he had planned to preach, when I put together the music on Thursday?" (Sometimes I forget that God orchestrates everything and if He gave me the songs and Butch the message, then they will fit together.)

Well, because God is God, the songs He had put on my heart earlier in the week worked perfectly with the message God gave Butch to preach. On top of that, at 10:00 last night I felt like we should do "Made to Worship" by Chris Tomlin. Brand new for us, I've never even begun to introduce it to the worship team. But if God puts it on your heart to do it then you kind of have to listen. So I pulled it out of the "New Songs Someday" file and at practice this morning sprang it on our piano player and other vocalist. We ran through it twice and said, "well, let's give it a shot!" So we sang it for offering, and closed by just singing the chorus. We might just have to add it to our rotation.

Sometimes you wonder if the congregation is moved to a spirit of worship through the music you lead them in. But today you could just feel it. And when people who don't usually say a word about worship mention that it was good, you know God moved in people's hearts. Sometimes I get discouraged and wonder why God put me, a self-taught guitar player who doesn't sing in the position of leading worship. It still scraes me to death. Our church is great. They continue to encourage both me and Butch in the call that God has given us.

Thank you Lord for Sundays that confirm the call. You are an awesome God. Thank you for giving us what we need to effectively serve you in this place.

Just wanted to share what God did on this amazing Sunday!

Hi all

It's hard to believe another week has passed us by. Wow, it's the end of October already. Tomorrow is no school for the kids. It is Nevada Day, a day to celebrate the day Nevada became a state. How come Washington never had a holiday for that!!!!!!

Anyway, we basically have no plans, just a day to relax with the kids. Well, I do have music to get ready for Sunday but most everything else is done. I should do this every week! Movie Night is tomorrow night. We are showing Nanny McPhee. Butch and a couple of the guys worked hard last week and this week to get the new screen and projector in. Thanks to the supporters who helped us be able to purchase these for the church. It will be cool to watch a movie on the BIG screen. Now we just need the surround sound...

We had Becca's fall conference today. She contiunes to excel in her classes. Grady and Spencer are at the age where we will only have a conference if they are not doing well. They generally do well. Spencer has a few low grades, more because he doesn't see the point of taking his time with his work than anything else. He is doing very well at drums, maybe we should have encouraged him to play them in Washington. He's already asking for a drum set. We told him he had to wait a year and see if he still wanted to pursue drums. Grady is also doing very well at trumpet. He and I are working on a song to play at Christmas. I haven't played my clarinet since the last time I played at Lake Tapps, the Christmas before we moved. I better get practicing!

Continue to pray for ministries here. youth group is growing slowly. Tonight was just our kids so we just had some time to hang out and play games. Next week we're having sort of a campfire night. The fire pit will be out from our Trunk-or-Treat the night before so we are going to roast hot dogs, make S'mores and have our worship and devotion around the campfire. Hopefully by sporadically doing something different, word will get out and more kids will come to check it out.

On Halloween we will have our second annual Trunk-or-Treat. We're hoping it will be bigger than last year. We'll have carnival games, cookie decorationg, hot dogs and s'mores, and of course the trunk-or-treat. Pray that God will supply the helpers and the families. We'll probably see a lot of kids come through as they are trick-or-treating. Pray that they stay long enough to plant seeds for a lifetime.

Well, I guess that's all for now. I have been scrapbooking older pictures but here are some from summer, when we went to Santa Cruz for an afternoon while at our staff conference. Note Becca's face as they are coming down the freefall. She says she wasn't scared but that pretty much mirrors her face on the Giant Dipper which now has her vowing to never go another roller coaster again!

Take care and have a blessed week!

Jen