Christmas Letter 2014

Merry Christmas 2014!

Greetings to all our dear fam­ily and friends! We’ve had quite a full year, most of it fun-filled, and we praise the Lord for His good­ness through­out every mo­ment of it. Since this was our last year of work­ing at PCC, January through June was marked by how many times we could have friends and cam­pus kids over be­fore we went our sep­a­rate ways. One fun land­mark was in April: we threw a com­puter-themed sur­prise birth­day party for Brian and had a blast! Many thanks to those who came and made it such a spe­cial day.

In June we launched a small dream of ours: a recipe web­site, at koser.us/​recipes! Currently it only con­tains Melissa’s recipes, and the de­sign is very ba­sic, but in the com­ing years we’ll con­tinue to make im­prove­ments. In the mean­time, feel free to browse for ideas (or just for fun!).

It’s been a plea­sure work­ing with such fine folk at PCC, and we do miss the good work at­mos­phere. Brian en­joyed work­ing in chil­dren’s church at PCC, and Melissa misses play­ing in the church or­ches­tra. We also en­joyed at­tend­ing a Couples’ Bible Study, taught by Dr. Dale Adkins. Our last day of work at PCC was July 18th, and we moved out the very next day. We praise the Lord for His grace in hold­ing off the rain as we loaded the truck. Huge thanks (again!) for every­one that made it a short move—45 min­utes to load the truck, and an­other 15 min­utes to fin­ish clean­ing the house. Several of our friends also drove to our new house in Mobile, AL and helped us un­load every­thing into the new apart­ment.

Some of our friends got mar­ried this year (woohoo!). In July we at­tended the wed­ding of Jonathan and Janae Sparks, and in August that of Andrew and Carrie Olsen. Since then, we’ve been able to keep (somewhat) in con­tact with our cam­pus kids at PCC, and roughly once a month we are able to bring Megan Koser over for a week­end of re­lax­ation.

God has led us to Crossroads Baptist Church, a won­der­ful church with car­ing peo­ple. The fel­low­ship meals each month have helped us in get­ting to know our new church fam­ily, and al­ready we feel right at home! There are also many ser­vice op­por­tu­ni­ties, and we’re ex­cited to see what the Lord will do in this min­istry.

These later months have been full of fam­ily (always a good thing!). In October we got to spend a few days with Melissa’s par­ents, as well as in­tro­duce them to our church fam­ily. In November we spent Thanksgiving with nearly all of Brian’s fam­ily, and we en­joyed watch­ing Megan Koser per­form in Pirates of Penzance at PCC.

December has so far been a busy month with dec­o­rat­ing, mak­ing good­ies, prepar­ing for a pi­ano recital, and mak­ing more good­ies. In the mid­dle of this we took a week­end to cel­e­brate our third an­niver­sary with horse­back rid­ing, fol­lowed by din­ner at the Oyster House. The fol­low­ing week­end Megan Koser spent a few days with us af­ter her se­mes­ter at col­lege was over, and will­ingly did a photo shoot for us. Thanks a bunch, Megan!

Last Christmas was spent with Brian’s fam­ily (including a sur­prise visit from Matt and Lindsey Rhoades), so this year we’ll be fly­ing down to Honduras to cel­e­brate the New Year with Melissa’s fam­ily.

If you’ll be any­where near Mobile in 2015, please stop by and visit! And please make use of our guest bed­room; we would­n’t want it to go to waste. 😊 Looking for­ward to see­ing many of you this com­ing year!