A Wilkins' summation of 2008

Dear Friends and Family,

Merry Christmas! We hope this past year has been good to you. As always, we have stayed very busy and the Christmas season has flown by so quickly that we decided not to mail Christmas cards this year. Instead, I have used it as a good reason to begin this blog, something I have been intending to do for quite some time.

So here goes: A summation of our year!

We spent the first half of the year separated, with Kip deployed overseas and Beth in Norfolk, VA working on her M.A. in Counseling. However, despite the geographical separation, God was faithful to us during the deployment. We once again experienced His great love and mercy toward us, as we were able to grow in our own spiritual lives and in our marriage during the long separation.

Kip spent November 2007 through June 2008 deployed on the Cruiser, USS San Jacinto, where he was the Damage Control Assistant. While deployed, he participated in training foreign navies and coast guards in damage control techniques. He visited Senegal, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, The Vatican, Greece, Israel, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, The Ukraine, Cyprus, and Palma during the 7 months he was away. Needless to say, I (Beth) was very jealous of all of the adventures Kip was having! However, I managed to have many of my own adventures and was able to travel quite a bit to visit family and friends during this time. I also worked full time as a home-based counselor for at-risk kids in the Hampton Roads area while simultaneously completing my master's degree, which I graduated with in May from Regent University in Virginia Beach, VA.

It has indeed been a busy year, with many exciting events. One highlight for us both occurred in February, when I was able to travel to Israel to meet up with Kip's ship during his deployment. We spend five fabulous days traveling the Holy Land, and it was truly a remarkable trip. A few of the many highlights included staying on Mount Carmel where Elijah called down fire from Heaven in front of Baal worshippers, sitting on the Mount of Beatitudes while reading the Sermon on the Mount as we looked across the Sea of Galilee, sitting on the foundational ruins of the Synagogue at Capernaum as we read in scripture of the miracles Jesus performed there, and sitting on the Mount of Olives at sunrise and reading in scripture about Christ's transformational work for us on the Cross. We also thoroughly enjoyed the Old City of Jerusalem were we walked the perimeter of the city wall, visited historical and biblical sights, including the Western Wall and Temple Mount, and bartered for souvenirs in the Arab market. We were so intrigued by the culture of Jerusalem that we are now both learning to speak Arabic!

Kip returned home in June, and in July it was my turn to travel the world once again. I went to Malaysia for two weeks with a former professor to teach counseling skills and techniques to lay church leaders and Malaysian university students. It was a busy time of teaching and training in both Eastern and Western Malaysia. I met many wonderful people and had the opportunity to explore beautiful Borneo as well as the nation's capital of Kuala Lumpur.

The most exciting thing for us this year though, occurred one week prior to my trip to Malaysia. In late June we received the wonderful news that we are expecting our first baby! God has blessed us greatly with this gift and we are incredibly thankful for his kindness in our lives to allow us to start our family. He was also faithful by protecting me from morning sickness during my travels. The combination of pregnancy and Malaysian food for two weeks did temporarily take away my enjoyment of seafood (I was served too much sea life with heads and eyeballs still attached, I suppose), but Kip is very happy that I am beginning to like seafood (in small doses!) once again. We are expecting the baby to arrive in early March, and we are waiting until the birth to find out if we are having a boy or a girl.

In the typical busy fashion that is our lives, two weeks after I returned from Malaysia, we moved to Panama City, FL, where Kip is attending Dive School until March 2009. He loves what he is doing and we feel very blessed by God's many provisions in our lives to allow him to pursue a path in the Navy he has long desired. He has officially transferred into the Engineering Duty community of the Navy and after graduation from dive school we will be moving to Boston, MA, where Kip will attend graduate school full time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

During this season of our lives we are reminded of God's kindness in our lives. We feel blessed to be in dive school and headed toward MIT. In addition, we are greatly blessed by our baby that will arrive in the spring, and we are looking forward to entering the world of parenthood and taking on the great task of raising our child in the love and grace of God's great love for us.

We appreciate our friendships with each of you and feel privileged that you have been a part of our lives. We would love the opportunity to see you more, so please know that our home is always open and we invite you to visit when you can!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Kip and Beth Wilkins