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The weather has changed very quickly from lovely sunny calm autumn to a whirlwind of rain and hail. We're so thankful for a warm home! Here in the Netherlands we don't celebrate the traditional American Thanksgiving day with the special thanksgiving dinner (hard to find a turkey here). But we did have day of giving thanks for the harvest at church. We brought food items to church and they were given to a refugee center.

In Sunday School we also focused on being thankful. The kids wrote things they were thankful for on colourful paper leaves they had cut out and hung them on a big branch I had brought. We also made little money boxes the kids could take home to collect their tithes. With the money collected at the end of the schoolyear we'll be able to buy Bibles and send them to kids who don't have a Bible. Some of the other Sunday School groups prepared some snacks to take around, and Moxie's group prepared a song with African drums to sing and perform at the end of the service. So it was a very special day. And we're thankful for the freedom we have to worship our God!

With flu and colds going around and the cold weather the kids especially are ready for school to close for the holidays. We're are so looking forward to Christmas this year as we will spend it with all of Rip's siblings and his parents. All 20 of us will be in the UK and we praise God for the accomodation that has worked out for that time. We thank God for His Son and look forward to celebrating the birth of Jesus.

Please do pray for our car. It is acting up a little bit, and we need to have it looked at before making the trip to the UK in a couple of weeks; we hope it is something simple."

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