the best Christmas present EVER

Before the holidays, I'd been asking God to cultivate a thankful heart in me...this whole past fall I'd been kinda whiny and discontent. I finally had to stop and repent of that, because that's a faithless place to be. But what always amazes me is that even in my sad state God still showers me with love! In November, when I was in the camp office, the laptop I use was shut, which is weird. When I opened it, a familiar blue envelope with "Mrs Leah Cox" written on it stared up at me. When I turned around, Mel and Amy and Lucka and Romana and Hannah were all beaming at me. They--along with Trevor and Cassie and Monika and Lucka's family--had chipped in and bought me plane tickets home for Christmas! !!! I immediately started bawling and thanking them like crazy. December 7th-30 I got to be in Iowa with my family! My biggest regret about last year in Chicago was that I didn't get to see my family very much, and my sister recently gave birth to a beautiful baby girl...so I got to see my family and nephews and meet little Miriam! I was--and still am--SO THANKFUL.

my favorite little boys. 

sweet miriam.

me.

"you're the one who writes the really long e-mails..."

YES, I write super long mass e-mails! It's like...I don't write so often, and then there's a million things to say, and...yeah. So in order to be more readable, I started this blog to tell stories about what God is doing around here and show pictures of the people I love.