Christmas Letter 2009

Christmas Greetings! December 2009
Somehow another year has come and gone, and it’s time to reflect on all that it brought into our lives.
Although it seems that our lifestyle continues to be busy, we did find some time for pleasure. Tim and I were blessed to take a vacation to Mexico in the Spring. We enjoyed resting on the beautiful beach. It was a wonderful peaceful trip, except for the fact that the “Swine Flu” made headlines while we were there, which made for a bit of an interesting return trip. In August we traveled to Klamath Falls to visit his sister Vicki and her family. Tim and the boys went hunting with some friends in the fall, and Tim and Matt both shot their first deer.
Tim has been the minister at Stone Creek Christian Church for nearly two years. It is exciting to be a part of the work that God is doing through this church family. Some of the highlights at the church this year included the Big Sunday Community Fun Day in August, where we rented a big tent and had church out on the front lawn followed by lunch and a carnival; Vacation Bible Spectacular for the kids; and the deepening of friendships as people learn, pray, and serve together.
Patti’s job as a classroom assistant ended in June. After unsuccessfully seeking employment for a few months, she investigated returning to school. This was an answer to prayer, as God closed the doors to working in the schools, but removed all of the obstacles for becoming a student again. Patti is enrolled at Concorde in their Medical Assistant Program. She’ll finish at the end of July, and looks forward to a meaningful and rewarding new career! In her free time she enjoys being a grandma, teaching children at church, and partnering in ministry with Tim.
Sharon is in her second year of residency in Family Practice at Milwaukie Providence. She works crazy hours sometimes, but juggles it all with grace. Jon continues to work hard, which often involves travel. His company loves him, as do we. Sharon and Jon have moved to the Woodstock neighborhood, and are serving at a new church, “Life House,” that meets in a school close to their home. Their golden retriever “Hurley” provides them with lots of fun and love.
Matthew has been a master mechanic at Landmark Ford for several years now. He plays drums and guitar for the worship band and helps out at youth
group. His wife Kaitlin is an assistant for a primary Special Needs classroom at Verne Duncan Elementary. She also helps with the youth group and teaches one of the childrens' Bible Adventure classes at church. We have enjoyed having them live in our basement for a few months while “house shopping.” They have a deal pending, and are hoping to move into their first house in January!
Bethany is a wonderful wife, mommy, daughter, and friend. Josie keeps her busy, but Bethany also babysits for a family at church and is involved with the youth group. Tavis gets the perseverance award this year! Last Saturday he graduated from Warner Pacific College. He has been working two part-time jobs, in addition to going to school, and being a husband and daddy. It is a HUGE relief for him to reach this goal, and we’re all extremely proud of him. He works at UPS as a part-time supervisor at night, and also works for NW Technologies. Josie is the sunshine of all of our lives! It has brought so much joy to all of us to love and care for her. She has a great sense of humor already and is a real “people person.” If you’re on Facebook, you might have noticed all of the hundreds of pictures we’ve taken of her.
David is a student at MHCC focusing on computer technology. In addition we’re blessed that he ministers at church leading the music and technology. This involves selecting music, coordinating musicians, leading rehearsals, playing guitar, and leading worship for the contemporary service on Sundays. His girlfriend Cammie Reyes is a Medical Assistant, and also teaches a children’s class at church. She sings on the worship team and we enjoyed having her in our home Bible study last spring.
We are also blessed to have both sets of our parents here in town, and to see them regularly. Tim’s parents, Gary and Juanita Long, continue to be active in church and are such a blessing to us and the entire family. Patti’s parents, Charles and Phyllis Nielsen are involved with the extended family, in church, and volunteer in many different ways.
Please keep in touch with us. We are on Facebook, but you can also reach us at timpatti@comcast.net. Many blessings to your family and you as you celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Love, Tim & Patti Long

“I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” 3 John 1:4

Can we be this kind of church family?

Excerpted from "Searching for God Knows What," by Donald Miller

"The way John writes about Jesus makes you feel that the sum of our faith is a kind of constant dialogue with Jesus about whether or not we love Him. I grew up believing a Christian didn't have to love God or anybody else; he just had to believe some things and be willing to take a stand for the things he believed....John seemed to embrace the relational dynamic of our faith. And he did so i n a n honest tone, not putting a spin on anything. He revealed how some of the disciples truly understood Jesus and how they were screw ups, and he didn't make himself look good, either; he just told it exactly as it was. That's guts, if you ask me. And then,not unlike Paul, John closed his book with a lot of sentimental talk, very to the point, but charged with meaning. He ended his book by telling the reader he was going to die. There were some people around back then who wondered if John was ever going to die because they had overheard Jesus say John would live forever, and because John got tortured and should have died early on, a lot of people assumed Jesus saw saying John was going to live forever on earth.
This is beautiful and meaningful because John wrote his essay a long time after Christ had left so he was very old, probably early ninety years old, and this was back when communities loved old people. They didn't put them in homes to watch television; they gathered around them because they represented a kind of gentle beauty and wisdom. This was back when you didn't have to be all young and sexy just to be a person. And it makes you wonder if John saw and wrote that he was going to die knowing within a few days, a few weeks, a month of gentle good-byes, he was going to go home and leave all his friends, and he didn't want any of them to be surprised or scared.
When you read the book you start realizing that people who were very close to John read this essay and got to the end and started crying because John was telling them he was going to leave, and then I'll bet at his funeral everybody was standing around thinking about how John knew he was going to die and told them in his book. And I'll bet they sat around that night at somebody's house, and somebody who had a very good reading voice lit a candle, and they all lay on the floor and sat on pillows. The children sat quietly and the man with the voice read through the book, from beginning to end, and they thought together about Jesus as the man read John's bock, and when it came to the end where John says he is going to die, the person who was reading got choked up and started to cry. Somebody else, maybe John's wife or one of his daughters, had to go over and read the end of it, and when she was finished they sat around for a long time and some of the people probably stayed the night so the house wouldn't feel empty. It makes you want to live in a community like that when you think about the way things were when Jesus had touched people.
A community like that might sound far-fetched, but when you read through John's other books, the short ones, all he talks about is if you know Jesus, you will love you brother and sister, and anybody who talked that much about loving your brother and sister was probably the most beloved person in their community, and when he died people would have felt a certain pain about it for a long, long time."

Psalm 103:1 Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

God has been so amazingly good to us and He deserves all the glory. It's hard to share everything He has given us without sounding prideful, but honestly, we are overflowing with thankfulness to Him.
He has renewed our joy for service by leading us to a new ministry that is well-suited to our gifts and passions. We are going to be grandparents! Several of our children are joining us in ministry at our new church family. God has given us wonderful son-in-laws and a wonderful daughter-in-law. Our kids are all serving God with their gifts. Our daughter Sharon graduated from Loma Linda School of Medicine today, and she and her husband Jon are moving home to Portland! God has opened the doors for her to complete her residency at Providence Milwaukie. God has given me new friends to share, pray, and grow spiritually with, as well as a new job that allows me to influence children and still volunteer in the church.

Psalm 115:1
Not to us, O LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory,because of your love and faithfulness.

What a privilege to be children of our wonderful, loving heavenly Father. As we walk in faith, He shows Himself faithful. He is awesome!

With a heart full of praise,
Patti

Come all Ye Weary, Thrice

Books I'm still reading...

"Can You Hear Me?," by Brad Jersak
"The Case for Christ," by Lee Strobel
"The Case for Faith," by Lee Strobel

Stay tuned....

Someday, I'll write an update on my work and our new ministry.

Love to all,
Patti

Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller

Like "The Shack," this book is a must-read. Miller, a Portlander, shares passionately and convincingly that our faith needs to be woven into our daily life choices if it will ever be seen as real by the rest of the world. And since my life-pace has again picked up, I am going to take the easy way out for this "book report" and just select some favorite quotes from the book to whet your appetite to read it for yourself.

"...I imagined life outside of narcissism. I wondered how beautiful it might be to think of others as more important than myself. I wondered at how peaceful it might be not to be pestered by that childish voice that wants for pleasure and attention. I wondered what it would be like not to live in a house of mirrors, everywhere I go being reminded of myself....Nothing is going to change in the Congo until you and I figure out what is wrong with the person in the mirror."

"...I can't explain how freeing that was, to realize that if I met Jesus, He would like me. I never felt like that about some of the Christians on the radio. I always thought if I met those people they would yell at me. But it wasn't like that with Jesus. There were people He loved and people He got really mad at, and I kept identifying with the people He loved,which was really good, because they were all the broken people, you know, the kind of people who are tired of life and want to be done with it, or they are desperate people, people who are outcasts or pagans. There were others, regular people, but He didn't play favorites at all, which is miraculous in itself. That fact alone may have been the most supernatural thing He did. He didn't show partiality, which every human does."

"There is something quite beautiful about the Grand Canyon at night. There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.)"

"Can you imagine if Christians actually believed that God was trying to rescue us from the pit of our own self-addiction? ... Can you imagine what Americans would do if they understood over half the world was living in poverty? Do you think they would change the way they live, the products they purchase, and the politicians they elect? If we believed the right things, the true things, there wouldn't be very many problems on earth. But the trouble with deep belief is that it costs something. And there is something inside me, some selfish beast of a subtle thing that doesn't like the truth at all because it carries responsibility, and if I actually believe these things I have to do something about them. It is so, so cumbersome to believe anything."

"Andrew is the one who taught me that what I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do. I used to say that I believed it was important to tell people about Jesus, but I never did. Andrew very kindly explained that if I do not introduce people to Jesus, they I don't believe Jesus is an important person. It doesn't matter what i say."

"...you begin to think the world belongs to you. You begin to think all space is your space and all time is your time. It is like in that movie 'About a Boy' where (the) chief character...believes that life is a play about himself, that all other characters are only acting minor roles in a story that centers around him. My life felt like that. Life was a story about me because I was in every scene. In fact, I was the only one in every scene. I was everywhere I went. If somebody walked into my scene, it would frustrate me because they were disrupting the general theme of the play, namely my comfort or glory."

To be continued...

God's Faithfulness

Dear Friends and Family,
Thank you for your prayers and support in every way these last several months as we have taken time to pray and seek God's direction for where He would have the next path in our lives lead. We have greatly benefited from this time to rest, travel, read, pray, and consider a variety of opportunities that have been presented to us.
Tim has officially accepted an offer from Stone Creek Christian Church in Oregon City. They are a loving family of Christians who are very excited for new leadership and desiring to be relevant to the families who live around them. We are equally excited for the adventure of ministering with this body of believers, trusting that God is going to make this another meaningful part of our life's work. It will be wonderful to have that sense of "belonging" again with a local fellowship.
Tim will officially begin on January 20th.
Again, we are so appreciative of all of the encouragement we have received throughout this process of transition. We are truly blessed by many wonderful friends and family. God is faithful!
Love to all,
Tim and Patti

Isaiah 58:6-7
"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?