The Seventh Gibson!!!

Mercedes Wren Gibson was born at 6:03 A.M. on February 22, 7lb. 7oz. and 21 in. long. She is so cute and tiny, and has already started smiling at us! We love her so much.

Family Update

Dear Friends,

Greetings from the Gibson family at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis. I have finished all but twenty credit hours of my seminary degree and have truly been blessed by my time here at Covenant. This seminary is a remarkable place and the community here has been wonderful for our whole family. We have all grown significantly from our time here and are so grateful for the support you have given to enable us to follow God's call.

I will, however, be putting my seminary studies on hold for a time. There are some personal issues that I need to give my full attention to before continuing, and the nature of full-time study is just not conducive for such attention. Rae and I have prayed about this decision and have received excellent counsel and advice, and we believe it is the best course of action. Covenant allows a five-year window for me to return to complete my studies, which gives us a measure of flexibility to come back with the focus and attention my studies deserve. We hope that you continue supporting us with your prayers.

My plans are to get a job here in St. Louis to pay the bills during this interim period and hopefully gain some new work experience. Our church community here has been a great support and help as we make these changes in our short-term plans.

We have another big change coming up soon. We are going to have a baby girl later this month! That’ll give us quite a stretch of ages with Madeleine 16, Elise 14, Paul 12, and Thomas almost 10. Madeleine is now a junior at Parkway Central High School here in St. Louis, and has been very busy with school. Elise is going to the high school for orchestra and drawing and doing the rest of her work through a home-school co-op. Paul and Thomas are also in the co-op and studying piano when they aren’t running wild in the woods near our house or playing sports with the neighbor kids.

We miss and love you all and are so thankful for your partnership in our ministry and interest in our lives. Please keep us in your prayers. I’ll keep you all informed of our plans as they develop.

Charlie, for the family

Helium Fun (Don't Waste Anything) Part 2

Helium Fun (Don't Waste Anything) Part 1

Madeleine Takes a Video While Sledding

Thomas is a Chinnikin

this is my lovebird! isn't he cute?
and plus, he is mine alllll miiiiiiiinnnnneee!!!!!
mwaa ha haaaaa!
sorry about that.
just my inner mad scientist coming out.

the Hyper Post on Various Pastimes While Listening to Music in the Car and Musings on that Crack in the Car Seat

I don't have a whole lot of news, but I do have a few funny stories. Once, we (meaning us kids) were sitting in the car waiting for our parents to come out of the building and drive us to church and there was some music on, so naturally we decided to pretend to play the instruments in the song and anyways, we were all playing our separate instruments, I was playing the drums, and because it was sort of a rock song we were all flailing our instruments, when one of the scary, colossal, towering, ancient single guys who lives upstairs came out of the building and all my siblings stopped immediately, but no one told me and I didn't notice cause it is hard to see anything when you have pushed all your hair over your face and are pretending to bang frantically on imaginary drums and cymbals and things all the time pretending to be screaming along with the CD, of course, luckily I wasn’t actually screaming, just pretending to. Whoa, was that all one sentence or what?! I have some unique skills! Ok, somebody is a TINY BIT HYPER RIGHT NOW!!!!! Back to the story. I finally realized that my accompaniment had ceased so I looked up saw the scary, colossal, towering, ancient single guy and promptly melted into a big pile of Jello and slithered down in that crack between the seat where your pencils and favorite rings and anything that happens to be in your pocket when you were twisting around in your seat to thumb wrestle or play rock, paper, scissors with your sibling in the back row, always falls into. Ya know what I mean? And yes, I realize that was only one funny story, not a few. But that’s just too bad for you; I’ll get around to it later.