Our Annual Christmas Letter

Many of you know we publish a newsletter at Christmas time that summarizes the year's events. As usual, we're just now finding the extra time to put this together. So, here is The Fiscus Buzz for 2011:

February

• While serving as pastor at Berean Baptist Church in Pioche, NV, we sense God calling us to minister in Tennessee. We pray for confirmation and wait for His leading.

May

• Jane finishes teaching a 1^st/2^nd grade combination class at Pioche Elementary School.
• Mitch baptizes a young believer at Berean.

June

• After several months of praying, God confirms His leading us to Tennessee and Mitch preaches in view of a call at Jones Chapel Baptist Church in Paris, TN.
• We celebrate a final Vacation Bible School at Berean Baptist Church. Summer missionaries from Mississippi help for the week.

July

• Mitch baptizes another young believer on our final Sunday at Berean.
• We say goodbye to precious church family and friends and move over 1700 miles from Pioche, NV to Paris, TN. Mitch drives a 26-ft U-Haul truck (with Callie the cat traveling with him, against her will) while Jane & Nicole (and happy-go-lucky Jake the dog) follow behind in the Durango.
• We celebrate our first Vacation Bible School at Jones Chapel Baptist Church.
• Jones Chapel “pounds” us with food and household items.

August

• Nicole becomes a 6^th grader at Lakewood Middle School.
• Nicole begins taking piano lessons again.
• Mitch baptizes one at Jones Chapel.

September

• We buy a home in Paris and move in (well. . .actually a bank buys the home for us and lets us live there for the next 30 years while we pay for it).
• Jane takes a 1^st grade maternity leave substitute teaching job at Rhea Elementary School.

October

• Mitch suffers with two bulging discs in his upper back.
• Nicole attends a middle school dance with a boy from church.

November

• Mitch baptizes three.
• Mitch marries a church couple.
• Jane’s brother Dan and his wife Teresa from Indiana come for a visit over the Thanksgiving weekend.

December

• Nicole turns 12. We throw a roller skating party with church & school friends.
• Jane finishes the maternity leave sub job and prays for more jobs in January.
• Mitch baptizes a teenager on Christmas Day.

It’s been a year full of many changes but God has remained steadfast in His faithfulness to us! Thank you for your prayers for us and for the ministry.

Nicole Turns 12!

Well, our baby girl is 12! Where has the time gone? It's cliche, but it is amazing that it seems like it was only yesterday that she became our precious daughter.

Her birthday celebration started with a greeting on the school's sign on Friday. Then on Sunday afternoon church & school friends joined Nicole for a party at the local roller skating rink. The photographer (Mom) wants to apologize for the quality of some of the pictures below. The rink was darkly lit and the photographer is but an amateur. The photographer also wants you to know that she didn't purposely try to take pictures of people falling. It just so happened that people fell a lot--especially since several of the birthday guests were first-time skaters.

The sign right before this one said, "Happy Birthday."

In other news, Jake the dog wants you to know that he is enjoying being an indoor dog--especially sleeping inside. Callie the cat thinks he's annoying, but she is tolerating him as long as she can bat him a time or two with her paws when he oversteps his bounds.

Callie is usually on guard on the couch when Jake's around

A favorite hang out of his is under the computer desk (especially when someone is using the computer)

Jane wants you to know that her maternity leave sub position is nearly over. She finishes on December 21 and is anxious to see what the Lord will provide beginning in January. There are some possibilities but it's too early to know for sure God's will in regards to them.

We hope our next post will be our annual year in review. This past year has been full of many changes but we praise God for His constancy and His blessings throughout.

Thank you for your prayers for us and for the ministry here.

Thanksgiving with Friends and Family

Our church friends Don & Sandra invited us to eat lunch with their family on Thanksgiving. Sandra is a wonderful cook and she pulled out all the stops and we left full and satisfied.

On Friday evening, Jane's brother Dan and his beautiful wife Teresa from Indiana came to town. We spent the rest of the weekend shopping, hanging out together, and visiting Paris Landing State Park.

We are grateful to be able to spend time together with family and friends. We have so much for which to be thankful. We are blessed beyond measure! We are thankful for the blessing of serving our Lord in ministry and with a wonderful church family. We praise the Lord for precious visits with family and are hoping more come for a visit in the future (hint, hint!!). Most importantly, we thank the Lord for the gift of our faith in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:8). He is so good!

Continue to pray for us and for the ministry here. In particular, thank you for your continuous prayers for Mitch and the pain he experiences with these two bulging discs.

We love you!

Uncle Dan & Aunt Teresa with Nicole

Update on Mitch

The doctor's appointment today revealed at least two bulging discs which are pressing on nerves and causing pain and numbness in the left arm and hand. One is borderline for surgery but the doctor believes that within 2-3 months, both could be much better. Though this timeline is a bit discouraging for Mitch, he believes the least invasive course of action is preferred. Please continue to pray for him and for healing in these discs. Thank you!

A Lot to Talk About

It has been over a month since our last post and there's a lot to talk about and thank the Lord for. First of all, we're settled into our new home. We're enjoying the space of a four-bedroom home and are looking forward to little projects, as time and money allows. We thank the Lord, once again, for how He helped us get into this home. Looking back, we're embarrassed to recall the amount of worry we devoted to the whole process and recognize the good and perfect provision of our Lord. (Find our new address at right.)

We thank the Lord for our precious daughter and are blessed to see her growing into a young woman right before our eyes. Earlier in the month, her middle school chorus gave its first concert at a community Oktoberfest. Then just a couple of weeks ago she attended her first middle school dance with a young man from our church. This doesn't mean she's dating. . .it was just a dance!

Our Dodge Durango is no more. We recently traded it for a used, more fuel-efficient car. The car's been a pleasure to drive and has certainly not hurt our feelings at the gas pump. We thank the Lord for giving us a four-wheel drive when we needed it in mountainous Nevada and are thankful now that He has given us another vehicle with much lower miles and much higher m.p.g.

Mitch has intense shoulder/back pain right now. Out of the blue he awoke in the middle of the night a few weeks ago with incredible pain which sent him to the emergency room. An x-ray revealed nothing out of the ordinary so he had an MRI this morning. He'll see the doctor tomorrow and he hopes to learn more about the source of the pain and find a better pain management program. The Lord has shown Mitch His grace and strength at this time but it has been a painful process. We appreciate your prayers for him.

Finally, and probably the reason why we've not posted in over a month, Jane has a new job. You may recall that she was hired as a first line sub at a nearby school. About a week or so after she started subbing at this school, the principal of another elementary school asked her if she would take a 1st grade maternity leave sub position at his school until January. She is thankful for the Lord's gift of full-time work, even though the position is a challenging one.

God has shown us His tremendous blessing and faithfulness in the events above and at our church. We are seeing the Lord add to our numbers, seeing men and women grow in their knowledge of the Lord and of His Word, and have been overwhelmed with our body's loving and generous gifts during pastor appreciation month.

Now for a few pictures. . .

Thank you for your continued prayers for us and for the ministry here.

Answers to Prayers!

This is a quick post to let our faithful prayer warriors know how God has answered two of our recent prayer requests.

1. We have a tentative closing date of September 20 on our new house. You may recall that we are supposed to be out of the rental house we're currently living in by September 19. Thanks to the generosity of our church members, we've received incredible offers to store our stuff and stay in extra bedrooms and even lake houses. But God did something even easier! He opened the new house up for us to move into! The seller called us this evening to let us know that he'll be out of town for the next week and that he's already signed the necessary paperwork for the transfer of ownership of the property. Because he also knew our need, he also said we could move in beginning tonight! It's just like God to do something this spectacular and just exactly when we needed it. We were preparing to box everything up, store it in a member's garage, and accept the gracious offer for temporary lodging. But now, we're just going to move everything up the street and into the new house.
2. This past Wednesday Jane interviewed for a first line substitute position at a nearby school. This position is guaranteed eight sub days each month, earns sick time (!), and will usually be the first one called for other sub jobs at the school. She has accepted the position and starts subbing at the school tomorrow. Her first assignment--1st grade! She is very excited to see how this position may work into a full-time teaching position in the future.

Thank you for your faithful prayers. God is so good and we are praising Him for these incredible answers to our prayers.

What an Exciting Time it is--An Update!

Thank you for your prayers for us as we are seeking the Lord's will and waiting for Him to reveal it to us. Since our last post, we've found "the" house, made an offer on it, and the offer has been accepted. We signed pre-closing loan paperwork on Friday and the appraisal has been ordered. On Monday it will be inspected. We're set to close by September 30. That is all good news. However, you recall from our earlier post that we have to be out of the home we're renting on September 19. So it is our prayer that the process will speed along more rapidly than usual (by God's hand, in fact) and that we can close and move out of this rental and into the new home without any problem. On the other hand, if God's grace is simply that He's found us a home but it will take a little doing to get into it, we are grateful for this, too. If this is the case, church friends have offered us a garage in which to store our things and extra bedrooms to sleep in. Once again we're on the edge of excitement waiting to see which way the Lord will take us. Keep praying for this and we'll keep you posted.

Finally, we'll post this picture of our silly cat. If you know cats (or maybe it's just a quirky behavior unique to ours), an area can be free of clutter except for one item and they'll lay on that one item every time. Mitch laid his Bible on the bed today after church and where do you think Callie chose to lay? I guess it doesn't hurt to simply lay on God's Word if you can't stand on it!

What an Exciting Time it is!

We have been looking at homes in Paris, TN since God confirmed the call to pastor at Jones Chapel Baptist Church. It's been both fun and frustrating. We've placed bids on two homes since and, for various reasons, God has closed both doors. Well, today we learned that the search must intensify because the home we are renting has just sold. That means we must move out in thirty days (by September 19).

In this whole process we can be sure of several things:

• God called us to Jones Chapel Baptist Church in Paris, TN.
• When He called us to Paris, we had no idea where we would live but God provided us a rental miraculously. (Reread our June 14 post "Answered Prayers" as a reminder.)
• We need another place to live by September 19.
• God has promised in Philippians 4:19 to supply all our needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Numerous other truths from His Word apply here: Matthew 7:11 and Jeremiah 29:11 just to name a couple.

What we don't know:

• Is it the Lord's will for us to buy the home we need or to look for another rental for the time being? The answer to that determines whether we put all our efforts over the next several days looking at homes for sale or homes for rent.
• Based on two homes we saw for sale today, we could be very happy with either one. One is on the west side of Paris in an agricultural area, closer to Paris' business district but farther from Nicole's school. If we bought this home, we would continue to drive Nicole back and forth to our ideal school for 6th-8th grades, and then after that she would be bused into the city for 9th-12th grades. The other home is on the northeast side of Paris in the Kentucky Lake area. This home is actually in Nicole's school district (so no driving to school would be necessary) but it's farther from Paris' business district. Both homes are just about equal distance from the church, about 15 minutes away--just in opposite directions. Should we put an offer on one of these (and if so, which one) or continue looking? Or is this discussion futile because God's best home (and location) is yet to come?

Jane's Grandma Freda used to say in times like this, "Won't it be exciting to see what God will do?!" This is the perspective we desire to have. It demonstrates our faith in our trustworthy God who IS more than able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think (Ephesians 3:20). We just have to fight the urge to fall back to worry (which, in its base form, is really doubt). Would you join us in fervent prayer about this issue?

Won't it be exciting for us all to see what God will do? Thank you for your prayers!