Groundhogs Day Letter

Dear Friends and Family,

In the spirit of following in the Whitley’s footsteps, we’re putting out our “Christmas” letter in plenty of time to make sure it gets to you before Groundhog’s Day.

While 2007 was full of adventure for us, it was also relatively calm. Since Xenos closed in August of ’06 when the church was given a new building, we have scaled back our involvement with Red Sea to a mere combined 15-20 hours per week instead of the 100 -120 (combined) we were putting in before. Though we went through some rough patches in the transition, the outcome is a very healthy relationship with the pastors and congregation of Red Sea that has been strengthened by facing conflict and working through it together. We consider Red Sea our Portland family and have been able to learn and grow in leaps in bounds with them.

What have we been doing with all our new-found “free-time” you may ask? We’ve had a couple of great vacations this year, including visiting friends in California, and going camping with friends outside of Ashland, OR. We spent one of the rainy nights in the cheap seats (which happen to be the ones with a roof over them) at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the other one huddled under a tarp next to the campfire. We were also able to spend time with both of our families at Christmas and wrapped up the Christmas season with just the two of us at a beautiful vacation home in Redmond.

Back in real life…Nathan has been teaching piano lessons both in his private studio at the church, and at Ethos, a local non-profit music center in North Portland. This past summer he was the coordinator of Ethos’ week long music camps, one of which was a Rock Band Camp where one of the bands (made up of three 8 year olds) called themselves the Food Fighters. Nathan also enrolled in Concordia University’s MATE (Masters of art in Teaching) program so in the summer of 2009, he will have his teacher’s certificate!

In December of ’06, Christy got a job working for a mentoring program through a mental health agency. After working there for one full year, she still loves her job! (This isn’t something that happens every time.) She recruits, trains, and matches adult mentors with kids who are receiving mental health services in the area. Because she has to train mentors how to work with struggling kids, she has lots of opportunities to attend trainings on the subject herself. In many ways, her job has been like a parenting class and both Christy and Nathan have been able to learn a lot about how to help kids succeed. Which brings us to our last subject…

Have you been able to catch the theme of what God is teaching us this year? Growing with our church family, getting some time to relax, Nathan is learning how to educate kids; Christy’s job is like a parenting class. Yep, you got it! God has been working all year at preparing us to be good parents, which is a good thing because on or around May 23rd, we’re going to have a baby boy! After 5 ½ years of spontaneous freedom in marriage, we’re getting ready to start down an entirely different path. Nathan (with the help of both of our dads, friends from church, and neighbors) has been working on turning the garage into an office/craft room/guest bedroom so that the room in the house that has been functioning in those capacities can now be a nursery. Christy has been purging the house of all unnecessary items in an effort to make room for something so small that comes with so much stuff. Stay tuned to this blog for pictures and stories from the Conants.

It’s been a great year of growing and change and we are so grateful for the part that each of you has played in our lives.