June 12, 2010

Dear Brethren,                                                                      

     As we come to the end of our first year of school at the Bear Valley Bible Institute of Denver, we want to express to you our sincere gratitude for all that you have done to make this possible for us. We can’t thank you enough for the generous support that you have provided for us throughout the year, making it possible to achieve our goal of attending preaching school, with the ultimate goal of going back to New Hampshire to work hard for the Lord, planting and growing congregations of His church.
     It has been quite a year for the Belanger family! We have had many changes in our life. Shane left his job as a carpenter and foreman at a construction company which he had worked at for twenty two years. I left my job as a preschool teacher’s assistant with Head Start, where I had worked for two years after being a stay at home mom for ten years. We picked up and moved our family across the country from New Hampshire to Denver, Colorado, to attend preaching school, leaving behind family, brethren, friends, and everything we were familiar with. Shane and I both went back to school again after many years, which has been a challenge with a young family. We also decided to home school our 3 daughters for the first time. This has also been a challenge. I was pregnant during all of this excitement and gave birth to our fourth child, our first son, Joshua Gary, on February 26th of this year. What a blessing!
     I have been dealing with a herniated disc for the past four months that has been pressing on my nerves and causing a great deal of pain. I will be having surgery on Thursday, June 24th, and hope to finally get relief. Please keep our family in your prayers. We feel so blessed by all that has happened this year and continue to be thankful to God for everything.
    We are so thankful for your support this past year as well as for the upcoming year as we finish our two years at Bear Valley. We will keep you in our prayers and hope that you do the same for us as we travel home for the summer and take a much needed break.
Love in Christ,
The Belanger Family

February 1, 2010

Shane and Paula Belanger
4654 W Oberlin Place
Denver, CO 80236

Dear Brethren:

Happy New Year to all of you!  We pray that you are all healthy and doing well as we are.  Shane’s parents came to visit us the day after Christmas and stayed with us until January 2.  It was wonderful having family visit and we had a hard time saying goodbye to them, especially the girls.  It was a much needed week of rest and relaxation with family.
 
Since then, our new year has started off with a bang!  The second semester here at Bear Valley has proven to be very challenging.  Shane is learning a new language, Greek, and is doing so at an intensive pace.  At our age it is proving to be quite the task!  He has also been taking a class in preaching where he is learning how to prepare sermons as well as how to deliver them.  He preached his first chapel sermon last week and delivered a good message from I John 1:5-10 on God is light.  He spends most of his free time studying, which he needs to do, but it has been hard for us to adjust to this change in our life.  We really miss having more family time.  Despite all of the challenges of such an intense curriculum, Shane continues to do really well. 
Homeschooling has been going well for the most part.  It is challenging for me to keep up with it while taking classes of my own and doing my school work.  Please continue to pray for us as we all continue to find the right balance with all that is going on in our lives.
 
Kaitlyn has been participating in a “God’s Precious Daughters” class with the second through sixth graders in the church.  She is learning to be a true servant and is having fun while doing so.  Yesterday she helped serve everyone at a baby shower, and this Saturday she is supposed to visit the elderly.  It is a great class, one that we do not have available to our youth in New Hampshire.

Jessica and Kelsey are involved in the Youth Group at Bear Valley and love the devotionals and time that they get to spend with their peers.  Last month they were able to go to an overnight teen retreat and had a wonderful time.  This was their first experience with something like this and it is one of the reasons that we are so thankful to be at Bear Valley.  They also participated in B.O.T.A. banquet of the ages, where they got to serve the elderly of the congregation and spend time getting to know them.  It was a great experience for young and old alike and they can’t wait for next year’s banquet.
 
This Saturday Jessica and Kelsey are participating in the local spelling bee.  They have been studying some very challenging words.  It should be fun!

I have been enjoying and doing very well in both of my classes this semester.  On Mondays I study Christian Evidences, which is always fascinating to me.  On Wednesdays I study Women of the Bible and have learned about some women who I have never heard of.  They are both excellent classes.
 
As you may probably know, I slipped a couple of weeks ago and pulled all of the muscles in my lower abdomen during my 33rd week of pregnancy.  It was very painful.  God is good and healed me quickly and we had loving brethren bring us meals.  What a blessing.  Thank you all for your prayers, and thank you to the ladies’ class for the thoughtful card that you sent.  It meant a lot to me!  Other than that, I have had a really good pregnancy and am very thankful to God for that, especially with our hectic schedule.  The congregation here at Bear Valley is so loving and sweet and is throwing me a baby shower on February 14th.  Would any of you like to come?  I would love to meet you!

I am scheduled for a C-section on Friday, February 26th.  We would greatly appreciate prayers for the surgery to go well, as well as for my recovery, which can be very painful, especially while caring for a newborn.  We also would like prayers of course for a healthy baby.  We cannot wait to meet our son and the girls are so excited to meet their brother!  We have certainly been blessed.  And no, we haven’t picked a name yet. Suggestions are welcome.
 
Shane and I would like to extend our sincere appreciation to all of you for your ongoing support.  It has been such a blessing and a comfort not having to think about how we will pay our bills. We can’t thank you enough.  We look forward to meeting all of you over the next few months after we adjust to life with a newborn again.
 
Love in Christ,

Shane and Paula, Jessica, Kelsey and Kaitlyn