Unlike many of you, here in Kansas City we've experienced a fairly typical winter. A handful of nights have dipped below zero. Snow has dusted the ground a few times; seven inches fell on one occasion, and amounts in between have accumulated on other winter days. I've worked by the woodstove for a few toasty evenings. (In fact, it's blazing away right now.) But between teaching two J-term classes last month, a mountain of papers to be graded earlier this month resulting from those January intensives, and dealing with the aftermath of the basement flood in late November, I've had far fewer opportunities to fire up the stove this winter than I'd hoped.

For the same reasons, I haven't published a newsletter in two months. We have simply been immersed in the basement flood-recovery process ever since the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Much of December focused on getting more than a hundred boxes of books, the shelves for those books, and other things moved to the garage. In mid-January the new carpet was installed. Since then we've been busy moving things bit-by-bit back down to the basement. Only this week did the hammering, mudding, and painting by the restoration workers cease.

Well, I won't bore you any more with those details. But that's been life at the Whitney hacienda. Suffice it to say that the past two months have not been the most leisurely in awhile. The worst part of the whole process has not been the material losses, but the disruption. Worst of all, the enormous writing project I needed to finish by the end of February has been further delayed. And basically I've written all the above to ask you this: please pray for an unusual outpouring of God's grace to enable me to complete this project and to do so as quickly as possible.

Caffy has started teaching "Personal Spiritual Disciplines" to the wives of twenty students at Midwestern Seminary. She really enjoys the interaction with them one night each week. This is in addition to the high school art class she teaches one afternoon a week at the school sponsored by our church. In between these and repainting the basement, she's continued to work on illustrations for a series of children's books. In her "spare time," Caffy has been sewing costumes for the Wizard of Oz production that Laurelen is participating in. Speaking of which,

Laurelen is back in CYT—Christian Youth Theater. This is a national organization with something like twelve chapters, including one here in KC. Her first experience with CYT was last fall as she participated in the production of Annie. At the end of February, she'll make her debut as a Munchkin in the Wizard of Oz. Things hardly get cuter than seeing your child playing the part of a Munchkin. Now if we could only get those Wizard of Oz songs endlessly sung around here out of our heads!

The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you.
2 Timothy 4:22