Merry Christmas!

This past week we have been enjoying our time in Alexander City, making precious memories with family! I wanted to put up some pictures from Christmas week!



Pop, Belinda and Nana all came to visit. Here we are on Christmas morning!



Here we are on one of our walks!



Mom and Charlotte



Here we are as the true Grinnell/Brooks family!!

Happy Birthday Mommy!

A week ago, December 19th, we celebrated Mom's 50th birthday! After a very insistent request to not have a big party, we had a great time just being all together. Below you will see the birthday cake all of us kids made and mom blowing all the candles out.


Our sweet Mommy!

Congrats, Amy & Rob!

This past Saturday, another of my great friends from high school got married. It was so much fun, beginning with an "Ultimate Dance Party" Friday night and then the wedding on Saturday. I was also able to catch up with my precious friends Tricia and Ginny.



Us in the bride's room with Amy.

Goodbye, Dallas...

We are much overdue to tell you that Thursday we packed our car and left Dallas to come back to Alabama. Before we left, our class had a "graduation brunch" at one of the local hotels. Here we are trying to avoid saying goodbye by taking lots of pictures. The great thing about being in Wycliffe is that we don't really say goodbye, we say see you somewhere around the world in the future! Watch for bloggs each day this week because we have had exciting events and we haven't caught up yet!!



Our MDOC boys!



Our MDOC girls!

Ft. Worth Stockyards

Today, we went up to the Ft. Worth Stockyards with some other MDOC students and families. Back in the day, cowboys would drive their herd here so that the cattle could be bought, sold, and transported up north, where people were willing to pay 10 times the original price of the cattle.

In front of the main administrative building of the Ft. Worth Live Stock Exchange.

It's hard to say goodbye!

Tonight we had to say goodbye to our dear friends, the Clark family. Since we'll be leaving Dallas this Thursday, we were at our final get life group get together with them tonight. I knew it would be hard to say goodbye, especially to their precious 2 year old, Sarah Grace, whom we've grown so much in love with! Below you see a couple of pictures of all of us, (in between my tears!!)



Dan, Sarah Grace, Ellen, Anne, Hannah Joy & Jay






Precious Sarah Grace and me!

Computer Problems in Africa

Since many of you who come to our website are computer savvy or even have a background in computers, I thought that you might be interested in one of Wycliffe's recent prayer requests:

"A translation team in Africa has reported that computer problems are the #1 hindrance to translating the Bible -- even ranking above the ongoing civil war. Most teams have minimal understanding of computer software and hardware. Since their only computer support is hundreds of miles away, even simple problems take months to correct. Pray: 1) for protection over their equipment and files and 2) that adequate technology and technical support will become more available."

I've personally heard reports of this stuff all over the World. The needs for computer people in missions is huge.