Recently, I’ve been catching myself saying old lady phrases like, “I can’t believe how big your kids have gotten” or “where has the time gone” or “there is no way you are that old” , “how are we halfway through January already” or “I’ve been married longer than I was single” and a few more.  I’m embracing the silver hair that has been sneaking into my ponytail, and the kink in my back reminds me that I’m definitely not 29 years old anymore.  

Dan and I finally sorted through and organized 25 years of digital ministry and family pictures (apparently, we never passed on a good photo opportunity with elephants!) and uploaded them to a digital photo frame I received for Christmas.   It reminds me every day of God’s faithfulness to us for so many years and all the fun we have had while being missionaries.

Miesha and Titus began their Senior year of high school this week – our 13^th (and FINAL!!) year of homeschooling together.  Being a homeschooling family has given us the flexibility we’ve needed as we have navigated different continents, countries, cities, and ministry travel as a part of our story.  Quite a few of my December days were putting together curriculum for this year and also transferring all our records to a new company who will oversee their credit hours and grant the graduation diplomas.  Also, we are in the season of researching all the options for further studies for Miesha and Titus both in South Africa and in USA.  Miesha’s future studies are a little more complicated as we are still waiting for her Permanent Residency visa to come through.  (I feel like PR has been a “broken record” prayer request for us the past 7 years!). Her PR could come through successfully literally any day, but since it still hasn’t come, we will need to file a petition for an extension on her current visa and it severely limits her options for study in South Africa.  Please continue to pray with us for her PR to be granted.

We had a restful December and had fun celebrating Miesha turning 18 years old with a gorgeous tea party and went to a couple of our friend’s 50^th birthday parties.  We had a long weekend in Johannesburg and reconnected with missionary teammates from our first years on the mission field and with friends from our Johannesburg church season.  Walmart has recently opened in SA so we had to visit and see what they were selling.  (It was kind of a letdown, but it was beautifully decorated and we did buy Dr Pepper and smoky almonds.  At this visit, we didn’t see anyone shopping in pajamas!)

 We celebrated with some missionary friends on Christmas Eve and went swimming and played games with friends for Christmas afternoon because it was so HOT!  We had a wonderful time together.   We hosted a New Years Eve party at our home (we saw a VERY decent fireworks show for how small our town is!) and hosted a couple of movie night with friends.  We’ve weathered some severe storms with lightning right on top of us!  We also hosted the big worship team get together and we all played the game Grab The Mic.  It was really fun!

We accidently got a third kitten this past week as a wild one snuck into our house and wiggled his way into our hearts.  We now have 3 male kittens –  a whiteish grey one named Smoky, a grey striped one named Zippo and this new little black one Miesha named Charcoal.  (Like our theme?!  We might need a little ginger one that we can call Flame.  Ha ha!). They bring us a lot of joy, but we are hopeful that Charcoal will figure out the litter box properly soon.   Yesterday he pooped in my potted plant dirt.

Dan’s garden is exploding – this is our first time having success with gardening and we have a lot of food to give away!  A friend from Idaho told me how they used to put all their excess zucchini into the vehicles in the church parking lot who didn’t have locked doors. Funny!

As we begin 2026, quite a bit of what we anticipate doing for ministry will be similar to 2025.  We are excited and prayerfully saying “yes” to a lot of wonderful things!  We are already partnering with New Horizon College again.  This afternoon we helped with details of the Picture Scavenger Hunt and printing questions for Speed Friending.   Dan will be sharing the Sunday message for the 200 students in the dormitories tomorrow morning – we are thrilled to continue pouring into these student’s lives.

Our Align group continued through the holiday season and we are thrilled at how well everyone maintained their sobriety this year through a challenging festive season!!  We are still supporting the ministry at Bambalela, some ministry in Eswatini is coming together, and we are likely to go to Zambia again.  It’s going to be a great year!

Thank you for supporting us through giving and your prayers.  The best is still to come!

With joy, 
Janell and Dan