Feliz Navidad! and Happy New Year!

What a crazy couple of weeks!

Sorry for the delay in posting, things have been exceptionally busy. I know that everyone can sympathize with me when I say the weeks before Christmas are crazy! The cookies, the lights, the crowds, the parties, the weather, the music.. all of it can get a little overwhelming! We were so behind getting everything ready this year. Lights on the house didn't go up until last week and we didn't get any shopping done until Tuesday!

I am glad to say that Shaun has finally fully recovered from his gum surgery two weeks ago. All swelling and infection is gone and his black eye has finally disappeared. Poor thing, people kept asking him if he was okay, a few told him he shouldn't talk back to his wife. :-) One guy said to him that he hated to see what the other "fella" looked like. IE: Shaun got into a fight, but looked so bad that it looked like he lost.

Due to his illness, I even filled in for him at his last youth group meeting for the year. I taught the kids on Christmas tradition and how sometimes we get so wrapped up in the gifts that we tend to put Jesus aside like the traditional gifts we receive. I even talked about how every year until I was a "grown-up" I got the unfortunate gift of socks and underwear from my grandmother. Thanks Siti!

Big news with the youth group: Cross Culture. We are moving it to Wednesday nights starting in the new year. This will be a great opportunity for the kids and for the Student Leaders. We kick off with a dance off and skate party next week. Great new about this for Shaun and I is we will now have our Sunday evenings back to rest! Yeah!!!

Speaking of Church, we are still continuing the growth of our 2 services. We are still experiencing those expected growth pains, but attendance and giving is still on target. The 11 is still much larger than the 9, but we hope that changes soon.

We held our first Christmas Eve service. It was simple and really meant a lot to Shaun and I. The people were so kind and it really helped us to feel like it was Christmas. I had the fun of calling all the kids up to front during the service and speaking to them and their parents. The funniest part was trying to hand 75-90 kids candy canes! The chaos was similar to what one experiences when they visit Sam Moon's for the first time. I also had the honor of singing with the worship team for the service. I really enjoyed serving with them. Adam, Matt, Laura, and Cindy did a great job. I was told afterward that I the only one moving when I sang... guess I've been singing with kids too long! :-)

We spent last Saturday in New Orleans visiting with Danielle, Andrea and ALL of their family. It was a very fun day and evening. I am so glad that I got to hang out with all of them and see Danielle. Miss you Chic!

We spent Christmas Day eating gumbo with Natalie's parents and family. This apparently is their Christmas tradition and they were so kind to include us. I brought some Lebanese food to them to bring part of our family to theirs. We enjoyed spending time with them and taking some time to just rest and relax. We know that many of our friends and family were sad that we could not come home, we were sad too. But, we will be visiting Texas the last week of January!

We are getting ready for this weekend. Shaun is up to bat in main service. He will be preaching both services. Be sure to check for the podcast. He using a verse that means a lot to our family: Joshua 1:9.

We are also getting ready to welcome Stella and Dennis to the Mississippi gulfcoast. They will be here on Monday. We can't wait!

Happy New Year!
Jess

It is Official!

Good Day All!

Well, it is official. We had and survived our first set of Sunday morning services. We had over 400 in attendance, close to 450! The kids area was back up to 100, despite the cold weather, we still managed to work up a sweat with all the singing and dancing that goes on back there.

I have been on full time at the church now for 2 weeks. I am still getting acclamated to this new routine. And for those of you who know me, I need routine! But, the transition has been a positive one. We redesigned the set for Mo Kids last weekend. Check out these pictures...

The great thing about 2 services is that it allows us to spend more time getting to know the kids, since right now, there are less of them in each service. I know that we will grow again soon, but it is nice right now to have 45-50 in there at a time versus 75-100!

I finally put my Christmas Tree up and Shaun and I wrapped up our semester at Liberty this week. No school for 2 weeks, yeah!! As many of you know, Shaun has been needing to have a surgery on a previously root canaled tooth for quite a while now. Well, he had the surgery yesterday. He is very swollen and not feeling so hot, but we hope to have him back to normal soon.

Today is family lunch friday at my former employer, Biloxi Elementary. I will be going there at lunch to help serve the kids for Christmas. Our home group actually adopted 2 of my kids from there, so I will be bringing them their Christmas gifts too. THIS is what I love about this time of year. Helping families who truly need help and making children's wishes come true. I pray that you enjoy the season through the eyes of a child as well.

In preparation for the annual Campbel Christmas card, I attempted to take the Christmas photo of the pups. Not much sucess, but some funny photos in the process. Since we will not be coming home for Christmas this year, we wanted to be sure that everyone receives a little something from us.

Enjoy the weekend. I hope you are all paws in for Christmas!

Merry December!

Hello All;

Well, I finished my time with Biloxi schools last Friday. They teachers and the Counseling team threw me a big surprise luncheon. They even bought me a cake! Check it out.

It is so me, it even has sparkly icing. Working for the schools has been one of the best things that I have had the opportunity to be a part of. I will still be used as a referral resource for individual and family therapy and Shaun and I will still be volunteering and mentoring in the schools.
-

I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving week. We really enjoyed spending time back in Texas. Danielle was gracious and allowed us and the pups to stay with her. Her dog Dixie Lee and Preston are now the best of friends. Thanks Danielle! Speaking of pups, they did great on the car ride back to Texas. Check out this photo of Sebastian. They slept the ENTIRE way there. Even when we stopped in Longview for Taco Casa, which was closed!

I got to visit Target and Sephora... ahhaa!!! And believe it or not, I didn't purchase anything for myself at Sephora, just something for Shaun. I am still stunned myself! I also visited the shoe department at Nordstrom's and no purchases were made! Again: shocker! Dinner with Danielle and Steph and shopping: perfect evening! Steph even ventured into Sephora... sorry that we tricked you Steph. :-) No, they don't sell guitars there!

-
-

-

We also got to visit the Boys and Girls Club, Alliance for Children, the Moore's and the Martinez crew. It was so good to see everyone! We are so blessed to have you guys in our lives. I am so proud of Maddie and Alec especially! They are fabulous kids and have such great hearts. God has big plans for those two! Check out how tall Maddie has gotten since the summer. We love you guys!

On the way to the Boys and Girls Club, we drove past the new stadium for the Cowboys. The Cowboys are doing a lot for the Clubs. We took a picture on the way to the Club. It is insanely huge! The Director of Operations for the Club gave us some stats on the new facility and the plans for helping the Club. Crazy good!

We drove to Wichita Falls on Tuesday night. We stayed with Grannie and Angie. They were so great to keep us and the pups. Grannie fixed awesome breakfast for us! And the food fest just continued after that... the reason for the delay in the posting of the blog is due to my food coma! I just recovered!My parents grilled us some mean burgers and some delicious brownies. Shaun's parents fried us fish and we had the best coleslaw in all of north Texas! Thursday was Jan and Gary's, turkey, dressing, Lebanese food, and I got the family recipe for kibba. Now THAT is a great day! We really enjoyed the food, but seeing the company was even better. I wish that we had some more time to see everyone that we wanted to see, we just ran out of time. So, next trip....

-

Today was my first day working full time for Mosaic. It is still very different and surreal. Shaun and I really had some time to reflect and realize how lucky we are to be a part of Mosaic and work with such great people. Dustin and Nat are so good to us! It is still a mystery to me how God works. This time last year, who would have thought that we would be working full time for a church? A church that has grown and is still growing and more importantly people are serving and lives are being changed! God's grace is so sufficient! We begin holding two services this weekend! Please be praying for Mosaic, for the people who will be coming, and for our staff.

-

-

I will let you know how it goes. Mo Kids still needs volunteers, but they will come soon. We start our new series this weekend. Check out the awesome logo! Thanks Jason!

More to come! We love you guys! Thank you for loving us! Christmas is coming soon!