Dear Friends,

First of all I want to clear my name from the harassment that it suffered in Haws' blog a couple of weeks ago. I actually do read the blog quite often. However, he was right in his accusation that I am way overdue for an update. I think that it was very appropriate (this time) that you opened your mouth when you did:)

Married life has been and continues to be such a blessing, in that it is probably one of the biggest challenges I will ever take on in this life. Our pastor told us during marriage counseling that marriage is the closest picture that we have of Christ's love for His church on this side of eternity. WOW!! What an encouraging statement, but what a challenge at the same time. Does that mean that I'm supposed to strive to love Emily like Christ loves His church? I guess so. That begs the question, just how does Christ love His church? I think that most would agree that the strongest demonstration of Christ's love for us (His church) was when he gave his only Son to die on our behalf. That's the story of the gospel.

There lies the blessing and the challenge. The blessing is that Emily strives to die to herself everyday for me. Why? Because she loves me. The challenge is that I must strive to do the same. This outworking of the gospel in our lives everyday has taught us much, even in the short time that we have been married. Much about ourselves and much about Christ.

Anyways, I do suppose that that response was rather impersonal, so I'll share some of the day to day happenings in Emily and my’s life. I think that the last time I posted was this summer, so I'll start from there. Emily is currently working at an interior design firm in Bozeman. She is liking the job more and more everyday and is getting very valuable experience. It is a challenge for her because the industry is very secular and materialistic. Oftentimes she will deal with a client who simply doesn't have a budget for the project. They are possibly building their tenth vacation home and will maybe stay in it for a week of two out of the year. You'd think that these people would be happy, but it turns out that most of them are on anti-depressant and anxiety medication. Also, the owner of the company as well as the employees are not Christian. There are however "spiritual" and believe in a bunch of weird stuff like karma and "vibes". The good part is that Emily has a neat opportunity to be a witness to them.

Me, I'm in my fourth semester of school at Montana State University. I have two more semesters to go after this one. During the school year I also work at a civil engineering firm in Bozeman for about ten hours per week. My employers are wonderful; although not Christians, they treat their employees very well.

Emily and I have been blessed with the friendship of three other Christian couples. One is a couple from our church, and the two others the guys go to school with me. We are so glad that God brought them into our lives because, believe it or not, Emily doesn’t really like “hanging out with the guys”:)

We have also been blessed with a wonderful church which we became members of this summer. There is about two thousand people in attendance on any given Sunday, so it was a little challenging at first getting to know people. On the other hand though, it forced us to get involved in the church in order to get to know people.

That’s all of the big news more or less. Thanks for listening.

Even though my blog posts are few and far between, that doesn’t mean that I don’t think about and pray for you guys. If anyone is game for a trip for Montana, you are welcome anytime. We have a very comfy air mattress in our 500 square foot apartmentJ

Love in Christ,

Jonathan and Emily