Holiday Happenings

Briefly, I spent the last four days with my family and a friend-family (the 10-kid Nowlands) in central New Hampshire. We stayed at a nice (and cheap) cottage (complete with 4 full baths and a hot tub), and skied at Gunstock for two days and Bretton Woods for one day. The cottage was so cheap and so nice because it's part of Camp Maranatha, where my sister Kez and I volunteer as counselors and laborers in the summer, and where the younger Furths have gone to summer camp since 1991 or so. Gunstock is a small mountain near Maranatha, and had just 4 or 6 trails open given the warm weather. After two days skiing there, the older kids asked if we could go to a bigger mountain for the last day, since the parents & little kids were going to stay home anyway. So we went to Bretton Woods, with 52 trails open, and had a great day. Actually, Matthew & Meghan had a snowboard and ski, respectively, break within the space of one minute at 2 pm. They were at the top of the hill, and my 13-year-old sister Polly carried 9-year-old Meghan TWO MILES down the hill ON HER BACK! I was impressed when I found that out at the end of the day...

Tonight I'll be over at David's for the annual New Year's Party, and might spend the night... or should I say, the rest of the night. Maybe I'll take a nap soon to facilitate that, since I need to get stuff done on the 1st and 2nd because after that, David and I are off to Louisville for a conference held by "New Attitude". Besides seeing a few old friends and doing my first flying since September 11, I don't know what to expect. Hopefully a renewal in my relationship with God, which has not been up to par for a while, but I've been around long enough to know that has a lot more to do with me than with conferences and other "mountaintop experiences", but the latter are a lot of fun anyway, and God-driven, I might add.

Peace, Salim.