2018 Was a Great Year!

I know this blog is a couple of days late, but we were out of town visiting family and I am sure that many of you were traveling or getting your life back to normal after the holidays.  I did want to take some time to review the past year, and specifically to hit the highlights of what was one of our best years yet as a ministry.  Before doing that, however, it is important for me to say thank you to each person reading this blog.  Whether you partnered with us financially, through prayer, by encouraging us, or just being there for our kids and our ministry, we cannot say thank you enough.  I remember when we first started out, I very genuinely and very ignorantly considered All Things New to be a venture that we (Jessica and I) were setting out on to bring glory to GOD.  I was very wrong. All Things New is an incredible group of people who have all come together to make a difference in the lives of others.  We know for certain that you have changed our lives and our kids’ lives, and our sincere desire is that as you have partnered with us, our kids have changed you and your family for the better as well.  Thank you for being a part of this team called All Things New.

With that said, here are some of the ATN highlights of 2018 in bullet points:

• We grew by 2 kids!  Tilene joined All Things New in January and Babyson came to live with us a few months later in May.  
• All of our kids passed school and a few of them have even started High School!
• We have had some initial conversations about what our kids want for their future, and we cannot wait to help them achieve these goals.
• We took the kids to the beach for the first time in 3 years (the next bullet point will tell you why we were able to do this again) and it was a wonderful day!
• We bought a new truck!  This was such an incredible blessing and has really changed our ministry capabilities and physical presence in Haiti in a lot of ways.
• We started 2 new job creation projects with at least 2 more in the wings for 2019.  I am really excited to share these ideas with you as we move forward, we are in the testing phase, but stay tuned to some really big news on the job creation front.
• We had 7 awesome teams come down in 2018 to do everything from prayer walking to house mom pampering to a Christmas party and much much more.  We love our teams and if you are interested in coming down in 2019 please let us know.
• We saw one of our employees move to America and get married (Sony will be very missed) and the rest of our employees continue to excel in their work.  We truly could not do it without them, and I truly believe they are the best group of employees in our entire area.
• From a personal perspective, the Bush family gained a new member as well.  Ezekyal came to America on October 20 for the first time and he is making a wonderful transition to our family.  2018 saw us start the year off with a 2 year-old and 11 month-old and end the year with a 3 year-old, 1 year-old, and a 7 month-old.  

There are so many more things that have happened since January 1, 2018, but I could only hit some of the highlights.  As you know, there were also struggles and obstacles as well as difficult decisions made…There always is and there always will be.  We shared those throughout the year and hopefully you have seen this ministry to be very transparent in both our wins and our losses.  However, when we look back on 2018, it was an overwhelming success for our kids, our employees, and our ministry and that is what we want to communicate here.   

The important thing is that GOD is moving and we are so glad that you are a part of that movement with us.  Over the next couple of days, I am going to our vision for 2019.  Looking back is important, and it is really nice to be able to see all of the things that GOD has done.  Sometimes I even think back to 2013 when we first started and I cannot even believe all of the events that have led us to right now.  But while looking back is great for encouragement, we are really ready to see all that GOD will do in 2019, so please continue to pray and to be involved with the ministry of All Things New!