Hi Family and Friends

December 2013

We haven't sent an annual letter out in a few years. We appreciate reading your letters, thank you for sending them our way.

Our last letter appears to have been in 2009. This year we made some changes in our business, and we hope we will have more quality time to spend together and with others. Eric's has modified his work schedule to be more toward the earlier hours, which was a significant hurdle for him. :)

What else is new in our lives? Well, Eric bought one of those machines that tells you how old you are, based on some hidden algorithm that they won't tell us.. and found out he gets older by years each day... Rodica is still in her 20's according to this new machine, so she has figured something out.

Then Eric heard about those new "activity" monitor things you can either put on your wrist or belt or whatever, and it will get you inspired to be more active... so we tried out a few of them, Eric finally settling on the "Jawbone UP", which will vibrate to let him know when he's been sitting around too much. He still has that problem of sitting around too much since his job is one of those "sit-in-front-of-the-computer-all-day" jobs.

The Jawbone also brags about how it measures your sleep patterns, but after wearing it a few times to sleep, he discovered that he had trouble sleeping with it on, since it was very uncomfortable at night, so he doesn't really use the sleep stuff on it. The part about zapping him for sitting around has been helpful., although the other machine still tells him he's aging a lot, so getting lots of steps hasn't reversed the aging problem yet.

Now he goes to the fitness center a bit more (Rodica was already doing that also) to try to find out if that will help with the aging problem... it seems to be helping, but results aren't yet conclusive.

We noticed ourselves (or mostly Eric) being tempted to purchase one of the latest Brookstone Massage Chairs.. but we escaped twice without making an impulse purchase, and Eric decided that rather than get a Massage Chair, the above fitness center idea seems to be better at removing those cricks in the neck and back, which are of course part of the aging, and sitting around problem, and it's cheaper (at least for now).

On Saturday (Sabbath) mornings you will still find us at Church, and Rodica very much involved in Choir directing at our church in Chula Vista. Rodica has been able to help people like Eric learn how to sing without damaging our vocal chords or other people's ears. which is a worthy cause and very fulfilling for her. :)

On Thursday's we participate in our church's United Prayer group, which has been one of the highlights of our week. It's not a stereo-typical prayer meeting, a little bit hard to describe in a short letter, but it is patterned after our experience at ARME Bible Camp. Here is a link if you are interested to find out more about it: (former, not working now)http://www.armeministries.com/prayer-testimonies/ or more recent: https://www.facebook.com/ARMEMINISTRIES/.

Eric also continues to enjoy listening to Dr. Tim Jennings Sabbath School class, which has a live broadcast each week at 7:20am PST at comeandreason.com, and recommends Tim's new book "The God Shaped Brain" which shows how the size of different parts of your brain are affected by your understanding of God.. and that changing your view of God can change the size of the different parts of your brain... something that can be helpful even for people getting old, aging like Eric is.

We cherish the time praying and studying together from the Bible every morning. Eric uses an interlinear Bible program with the original Hebrew and Greek from www.scripture4all.org, and has found things that are not in other translations. We have enjoyed the book of Proverbs. It contains more wisdom than first meets the eye.

We wish all of you a new year of learning new and insightful things.

with Love, Eric and Rodica