Christmas Greetings from the Dudecks

We want to wish all our friends a merry Christmas today from our home in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. We are grateful to Jesus Christ our Lord for giving us another good year serving Him. We thought we would just share a few items from the year.

John has spent the year working on a computer project at SIM International. Pam worked as receptionist for a law firm, but health problems led her to quit after six months. Jennifer is now in her last year of high school.

In June John and Jennifer went to the International Conference on Computing and Mission, held at Taylor University in Indiana. This is a conference for people who work in information technology in mission organizations, that John attends each year. This year Jennifer went along, and was able to visit Taylor's Campus. She is now applying to Taylor to attend next year. Pam's sister Paula lives not too far from Taylor, so Jennifer will be able to visit her aunt.

In July Jennifer went to an engineering camp for high school girls at Virginia Tech. It was helpful in clarifying her interests in the various fields of engineering. She now is thinking she wants to take a major at Taylor called New Media, which is an interdisciplinary program bridging computer science, art and communications.

In November John and Jennifer attended a father-daughter summit conference put on by the National Center for Fathering (http://fathers.com/). We were greatly blessed by the communication that it opened up between us and we highly recommend it for all fathers and daughters.

In January and February 2008 Jennifer will be part of a robotics competition that her high school is entering. The students have six weeks to create a robot that accomplishes certain tasks, and then enter it in competition against robots from other schools. John plans to participate as a parent mentor. There are about a dozen people from industry mentoring the students. It will be an intense effort, and should be highly educational for all sorts of skills needed when working on projects in the real world.

We would appreciate any prayers you can give for Pam. She is suffering from insomnia and related effects, and we have been unable to find a doctor that can get to the bottom of it. Sleep medications are becoming less effective, and she is only getting a few hours sleep each night. Through all of this we sense God at work in our lives to mold us more into his likeness.
We wish all of you the best in the coming year.

John, Pam and Jennifer