2015 - Christmas Letter

December 2015

To all our dear Family and Friends,

Merry Christmas! We’re SO blessed to be home to spend the holidays with family again this year! Every year, God leads us to a different situation in which to serve. Early this year, we spent 3 months at the Nazarene Eurasia Regional Office and now we have just returned from 2 months in the Philippines!

In Europe, Dan assisted Brad Firestone with IT projects including a quick trip to South Africa, while Janet helped with digitizing publications to upload into the Wesleyan Holiness Digital Library. The snow was gorgeous, just like a Christmas card! We had the opportunity to visit Berlin, Germany – SO much history! We also got to spend a long weekend in Rotterdam with Erik and Petra Groeneveld, native Dutch friends who we met in 2014 in Australia!

We returned to the States in early April and thoroughly enjoyed almost 6 months at home! We joined the Y, used the local library, planted and harvested our vegetable garden, and sang in our local church choir. Dan got to ride his motorcycle, installed a “French drain” in the back yard and added some landscape edging around the house.

During that time, we became aware of needs matching our skills in the Asia-Pacific region so, in October and November; we served in Manila on the campus of Asia-Pacific Nazarene Theological Seminary (APNTS). We renewed friendships and made some awesome new friends among the
nationals, students and missionaries there. While we were there, the WMC (Nazarene World Missions Communications) office on campus wrote an article about us! Here is the link to it: The Reinharts and their call to missions.

Home now for the holidays, we’re even (almost) enjoying the cold weather since leaving the warmth of Manila. Christmas will be special this year when we travel to Massachusetts to be with Marcy & John and family and Derick & Nola! We’ll celebrate with Erica and Monica on another day and with Darin by Skype.

Family news…

Marcy is a local police officer in Fairhaven, MA. Husband John is still with Samsonite (we still benefit from his samples!). Megan is a senior RA at University of Rhode Island, studying Human Development and Family studies with a Psych minor, and she’s applying for masters programs in social work. Morgan is a sophomore at Curry College near Boston, majoring in Nursing. Both girls work at a local seafood restaurant when they’re at home! Tucker is an 8th grader enjoying life with both sisters away at school.

Monica is still enjoying her CPA job in Belleville at a local hospital. Dylan is an 8th grader at Zion Lutheran School (he was so good as one of the leads in the school Christmas play!) and Caitlyn is a sophomore at Belleville East High School. We have enjoyed seeing her in a holiday madrigal dinner and their Christmas choral concert! Monica’s choir concert is this weekend.

Both of our 8th grade grandsons have grown A LOT this past year in both height and maturity.

Derick and Nola live in New Jersey so Derick can work on the outsides of the skyscrapers in New York City, living his dream of “Life on a Rope” as a top-level-certified rope access technician. Nola continues enjoying her work as a nanny for a local family. They both also have been enjoying opportunities to visit and grow in their relationship with Derick’s adult daughter Tessie, who lives in Pennsylvania, with her daughter Tatum. So now he is getting used to being a Grandpa…

Darin still lives in Raleigh, NC, where he has just taken a new job installing security systems in businesses, while building custom motorcycles in his off-hours.

Adam does computer work. His and fiancée Dana’s home in Washington, IL, was destroyed in a tornado in October 2013, but they were not injured, and have a new home in Peoria, IL.

Erica is enjoying her management position as purchaser at the Lutheran Senior Services facility where she still sometimes cooks. She’s moved to a cute apartment in St. Louis with her cats this year. Her boyfriend Matt is a pilot; when they have the same days off, they are active outdoors people – hiking, running, biking, camping.

God continues to provide rich experiences and wonderful people to work with in our retirement from paid careers. Along this pathway there are a couple of important things we continue to learn (or relearn):

• The special, never-ending value of family and friends like you. We are truly blessed with your ongoing friendship, prayers, and support as we follow His leading. We so appreciate being able to keep in touch electronically when we can’t be with you in person!

• God’s Retirement plan is WAY better than any we might have ever dreamed of! He is keeping us active, useful, challenged, excited and growing (see Romans 8:14-15 in The Message).

We’re headed back to the Philippines-Micronesia Field Office in Taytay (Manila), Philippines, in January for 3 months to assist with technology projects and in the finance office with the awesome teams there. And we’ll wait to see what He will do next!!

May your Christmas season be blessed and your New Year filled with joy!

Dan & Janet Reinhart 835 Autumn Rise Lane, Columbia, IL 62236 home: 618-722-5114

Reinhart47@aol.com cell: 314-484-1898 JanetM52@aol.com cell: 314-484-1906

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