[From: Kelli Wilson]

Hello friends and family. I have a small piece of news—I have a new student! He arrived on the 100th day of school. It was quite a surprise. We are still adjusting to having another student and he is still adjusting to a new school. I can definitely use your prayers in this area as he is still learning how to listen and obey. His addition brings my class to four girls and three boys. It is nice to have another boy to even out the numbers a little bit.

A couple weekends ago I went with the basketball teams on an overnight trip to Albuquerque as a chaperone. It was both a fun and slightly boring trip—which I expected. I am now a teacher and it is not cool for teens to hang out with teachers! But I felt that it was a good trip. I got to see the games and the kids at least know my name by now—an improvement. Around here it takes a while for people to warm up to you—so I was excited to go on this trip. We left school on Friday at 11:00 and then we drove to Albuquerque to play a Christian School down there. John Bloom has gotten to know their coach over the years and they wanted us to play basketball, but also to hang out with them over pizza after the game and let the players from each team get to know one another. They have a great group of Christian kids and it was a neat opportunity to get to know them. We then spent the night in their school, got up real early and left for Taos where our guys played another team. On the trip back home, we had to take a huge detour because of blowing snow on the road. Every time the kids asked how much longer the answer was "Oh about 2 ½ more hours". I thought there was going to be a mutiny! But we got to Farmington and ate dinner at the mall and had a few minutes to shop too. That tended to take the edge off the kids' attitude a bit! All in all it was a great trip.

January was a great transition month. Not to busy, but busy enough. Just looking ahead at the next month lets me know that I'll have a lot more to report then. I covet your prayers this month especially with my new student.

In Christ,

Kelli

[From: Andrew Nelson]

Dear friends in Christ,

After a relaxing and enjoyable Christmas break I had a lot of video editing to do. I put together DVDs for the Community Christmas, the Angels Musical, and some home videos. I finished them all in time for the first couple of basketball games in January... of which I also put onto DVD. The first game was just a girls game and they lost bad. This was attributed entirely to the fact that they had not had a practice together for about one month. They quickly came back to play much better then rest of January.

In late January we had basketball games in Albuquerque and Taos. Which is rare since we normally don't play those teams until the tournament since it is a long drive. It was over 5 hours drive to get to the first game after which our teams had a pizza party with their teams followed by some teaching from their youth pastor. It was a very good time. The teaching was really good and well geared toward the age level of the students. I think it really helped a few of our students think about what is really important in life and about giving their life to Christ in a real way. So, even though the trip was an extra expense we don't usually have, I think it was totally worth it.

Recently I have discovered a lot of old historic photos from the Mission along with many historic documents and letters. I have been having some of the students in my class scan them into the computer so they are much more accessible. I am then letting the current staff and some former staff look them over to help identify people, places, and events. I hope to one day turn some of this into a valuable resource for supporters and others interested in the work of the Mission.

We have been getting a lot more moisture this Winter than any other year in maybe the last 15 years. Lately it has been in the form of snow. One day it snowed over 6 inches. The most there has been since the drought began has probably been 2 inches that falls in the early morning and is melting away by noon. The 6 inches we got has stayed around for weeks and when it started to melt it was also joined by rain. This caused the roads to become extremely soupy and was enough to even call off school for a day. Then soon after we got blizzard that coated the grounds again with another layer of snow. With the sub-zero temperatures at night and still below freezing during the day the snow stays around for a while.

Continuing on,

Andrew Nelson