Hi Friends and Supporters,

My family has been successfully transplanted from Oklahoma to Mississippi. We still haven't unpacked all our boxes, but there is an increasing semblance of order. Much still needs to be done. This is complicated by an ice storm that came and caused a local disaster, with power lines destroyed around the region and throughout town, many homes also being damaged. Today my family is living out of the church building, as our home has no power.

I have yet to get a studio set up, but I finally found a room to put all my gear. I'll probably repurpose that as a makeshift studio for the time being.

Much of my time and energy has been spent just trying to understand this new church and its people. Getting all of the different accounts under the same umbrella, getting credentials and passwords, for all of them, on top of starting a membership audit and meeting with different community leaders has been...a lot.

After worship this Sunday, I am intending to rent a car and drive back to Nowata, where I'll load up a final moving truck with the remainder of my family's property, then get back next week on Wednesday. I know I said I would aim to have PlainSpoken back up and running at the start of February, but it looks like it won't be until at least Monday, February 9 that I'll be able to generate anything.

It has been nice to change speeds for a little bit. It was needed. I have enjoyed spending some time away from the larger culture. In the times that I dig back in, I have continued to find insightful and helpful voices. I have thought, more than once, that maybe my voice isn't really needed anymore, and that there isn't much to say that isn't being said.

But lately I have come to see that there is much around our culture's failure to effectively combat postmodern deconstructionism and flagrant neoMarxism. There is a categorical incomprehension of sin and depravity. There is a willful rebellion against nature and truth. It is obviously outside of the church, but it is also inside. It is making a home, not only in churches, but in the hearts and minds of very sweet, very faithful people.

There is work to be done, and I aim to do it, even as I prioritize my own family and my church ahead of this project. General Conference approaches, and there is much discernment to be done. I am feeling eager to begin the work.

Please keep me in your prayers. Let me know your thoughts about how to pick things back up. Everything is very much in a formation stage right now. I'll look forward to kicking things back off with you soon!