Dear Family & Friends,

Greetings from the winter wonderland of Minnesota.  For those of you that we don't get the chance to talk to as much as we'd like to, here is an update on what's been going on with us during the past year.

We added three new family members in 2000. Our six year old shelty Elliot was a foster dog that we were taking care of through the organization Second Chance, and we liked him so much that we decided to keep him for ourselves. We also got two new guinea pigs this fall, Abigail (Abby) and Ellen (Ellie).  They've all added a lot to our lives, and along with Molly, our ten year old shelty, there's plenty of love to go around. On a sad note, we bid farewell in September to our four year old guinea pig Miss Piggy.

We were able to take a couple fun trips this year.  In April we spent a week in Seattle.  Rachel's aunt Kathy Lapham was our gracious host, and we got to spend a lot of time with her and with Rachel's cousin Mike Lapham and his girlfriend Stephanie Moe.  Mike and Steph even took time out of their busy schedules to take us camping for a night in the beautiful San Juan islands north of Seattle.  We also spent a couple days in Mount Ranier National Park hiking and enjoying the outdoors.

In September we took Molly and Elliot up to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area on a four day canoeing and camping trip.  We paddled the old Voyageurs' canoe route along the Canadian border, crossing lakes like Saganaga, Ottertrack, and Knife.  On our second night we stayed at a campsite on the Knife Lake island next to Island of the Pines, the now deserted home of Dorothy Molter, the "Root Beer Lady" of some fame in the North Woods.

Also in September, Jeff started in a new software engineering position at West Group.  He is now working in the Portal and eSolutions Development group, and is working on a project to redevelop West's LawOffice.com web site.  Furthermore, not content with having any free time, Jeff decided to go back to school to work on getting a Master's degree in Software Engineering at the University of Minnesota.  He's enjoying the program, but is also definitely looking forward to graduation in May 2002. 

Rachel is still working as a Registered Nurse at St. Joseph's Hospital in St. Paul, but is now working in the Intensive Care Unit.  She decided to not let Jeff have all the fun, and so she's going back to school, too.  She'll be starting in January 2001 at Metro State University to get her Bachelor's degree in Nursing.

We continue to be very active in our church, First Free Church in Minneapolis.  Rachel sings in the choir, in the Sunday morning worship leading team, and in the contemporary worship team called The Planters.  Jeff is on the church Council, and is also the chairman of the Finance & Property Board.  He also runs the church web site.  We were sad to lose our senior pastor of several years, Gene Bourland, earlier this year, but look forward to God's calling of a new pastor in His time.

The year 2000 also saw us doing some major exterior home improvement projects.  We resided our garage (with Rachel's sister Emily and her husband Bill's help), and later in the summer painted our house (with the help of many friends and family members).  And in June, Rachel and Jeff successfully ran an 8 km race at the Minnetonka Summerfest, a "home improvement project" of sorts, if you consider that our bodies are God's temple (I Cor. 6:19-20).

At this time of year, we are reminded of our gratefulness to our Lord for the gift of His son Jesus.  We marvel at the mystery of the unfolding of his plan for the redemption of humanity, and how it began with a small baby born to ordinary people two thousand years ago (Luke 2:1-20).  We hope that you also will stop to remember with gratefulness to God the sacrifice that he made on our behalf (John 3:16).

With Love,

Jeff, Rachel, Molly, Elliot, Abby, and Ellie Olson