Bryson and Mindy White Culture/Language Acquisition in Paraguay 
We had a really good Christmas break as we were able to spend the entire break at my parents’ house. It began on December 21, Elijah’s birthday, so we had a party for him that night. He got to have some special guests for his party as some friends, the Davises, were able to stop by for the night on their way from Mexico to Michigan. Hannah was so excited about Santa coming that she had to clear off the fire place so that he had a way to get in. She also left cookies and milk on the table. She was surprised in the morning to wake up to an empty plate and glass and a note left by Santa (actually written by Pop). My sister, Cora, and her family came late on Christmas Eve, so when the kids got up they got to wake up to them being here.
Cora and Jeremy are trying to adopt two little boys, which has turned out to be a really difficult and lengthy process. The adoption has actually been completely finished for the older boy, so he is now officially Landon James Toth. Please continue to pray for them and Caleb as this is a difficult time for them. It was good to be able to spend time with these two boys, not knowing if we will be able to do the same next Christmas. They were able to be there for about 4 days.
The next thing we did over break was quite an experience. One I did not really appreciate at the time, but one that takes skills that could end up being very useful on the mission field. We purchased half a cow to split four ways with some other students here. The other families did the cleaning before break since they were going to be gone, but the butchering was left for us to do over break. My parents were also a big help with this; my dad especially as he was in the MTC kitchen helping me for the entire 18 hours that I was in there.
The rest of the break was a fairly restful time. We spent New Years Eve and Day just hanging around at my parents’ house and watching the Rose Parade. For the last several years, we have very slowly been working on putting all of our Bible School notes in electronic format so that we can throw away all of the paper notes (starting at two boxes worth of paper). Mindy did a great job during the last week of break finishing up a lot of that; the end of that endeavor is really in sight within the next couple months. We added a Christmas Break 2007 category on our picture page if you’re interested. Although we had a really good break, we are now happy about getting back into classes. We are really looking forward to seeing what God has for us this coming semester.
