snatch one of the babies. In the end, the leopard wandered off still hungry and with a few souvenir quills as the four porcupines huddled close together, safe and sound. The interaction between these animals was like a dance and fight mixed into one. It was as if everyone knew their part and understood that any deviation from the plan would result in fatal consequences.

This short video reminded me of the power of a family. We are all too familiar with the pain of family these days. Broken promises and broken hearts are scattered all over our world. It seems like most people agree that families are a source of strength and the bedrock of a healthy society, and yet many of us have lost trust in our own families. The result is many broken-hearted people and lots of fat leopards.

In any culture, there are evil forces that seek out easy prey for their own needs. Scammers who prey on the elderly. Title and payday loan places that prey on the desperate. Corrupt leaders who prey on their people for power. Human traffickers who prey on the vulnerable. “Noble” causes that sow hate and prey on the disillusioned. Too many things to list that prey on innocent children. It seems we can’t even go to the local store without some leopard hiding in the aisle.
 
These little porcupines inspired me once again to value the power of a family. I understand all too well the hurt that surrounds the word family. Yet, I have also known the beauty and strength of having a good family. My family is a diverse mixture of relatives and friends. Many therapists call this a support system. I have had to learn over the years how to depend on the right family members when leopards are on the move. In a fight, I want to be working as a team with those I trust.
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So, how do we begin to find those who are ready to be a family and work together? Here are a few suggestions from my few years on this earth. 

​All of these suggestions take time and sacrifice, but the results are amazing. Take a chance on finding your porcupine family, and when leopards come to steal away your joy and life, you will find you are not alone and that the leopard is the one who has to flee. 

In His Name, Bonnie
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“Do not be anxious about anything”. Did you catch that part? Right. Ok. No problem. I’ll just relax about everything now. Thanks, Jesus. Glad we cleared that up. 

I suppose you could accuse me of overreacting to Jesus’ message about anxiety here, but I also don’t think that Jesus was joking around. In the midst of everything happening in our daily lives and around the world, which today we unfortunately know everything about at every ongoing moment, we are somehow supposed to remember to take a deep breath, chill, and be thankful for the good stuff. Stay focused on that which is praiseworthy as Jesus sees it. Even when you’re facing down a seemingly nonstop firehose of bad news and scary things and stress and stories and experiences that seem to pull you down against your own will or control. “Do not be anxious about anything.”

It makes sense when you think about it. But that’s Jesus for you, always stunning us with His fog-clearing wisdom amidst our constant worldly befuddlement. 

In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis put it this way through the voice of Screwtape, the senior demon advising Wormwood, the underling demon-in-training (if you're unfamiliar with this book, remedy that first of all, but in the meantime, “the Enemy” here is God — the enemy from Screwtape’s perspective):

As many of you know, Jenny and I, along with our kids, Clark and Skye, performed 15 Christmas cabaret shows this past December at the resort downtown alongside our trusty bandmates, Eric and Craig, from our worship band. Our show was an hour of cherished Christmas songs mixed with narrated stories from Coeur d’Alene’s Christmas past. Preparing for this cabaret took most of the year and was very taxing in many ways on our family. We had to coerce the kids into practicing their music and stories when it was still warm outside, and they just wanted to play — we had to rehearse Christmas music in the heat of July, for crying out loud! As the show grew closer, the prospect of sufficient ticket sales to even meet our budget began to weigh on our minds, too. Was our show actually any good? We thought so, but would anyone else think so? Would this all be a huge waste of time and effort? And perhaps above all things to worry about, to be anxious about, was maintaining our health throughout the run of the performances. For any of us to fall sick between Thanksgiving and Christmas would have posed a very serious problem indeed. 

Often, Jenny was awake at 3:00 am on account of these things, feeling anxious. I was anxious too at times, just thankfully not at 3:00 am. But Jenny was. I would feel a general “downness” for hours almost every day before a performance. The kids sometimes moaned and groaned, “Aww… do we hafta do another show tonight?!?” 

But then we’d perform the show. We’d get through it, sometimes with a flub or two, sometimes feeling a lack of connection with the audience, sometimes disappointed by a lower number of audience members than we had hoped. And don’t get me wrong — sometimes it was great and exhilarating without flaws and great energy from the audience. But it was still taxing. And we’d get through it. And every single night, all 15 performances without exception, there would be unexpected expressions of gratitude from a handful of audience members to blow away in an instant all of the fog clouding my mind with anxiety or otherwise. I was constantly surprised by people approaching with tears in their eyes to tell me how special it was to hear that song or how meaningful it was to be reminded of happy times from their childhood here in Coeur d’Alene. Or, quite often, to see the joy in my face while watching my own family perform! Several times, I was reminded by a misty-eyed parent just how blessed I was to have such a family. I would hear about how much joy they would receive by simply observing my gratitude live and on-stage for my own family as they performed. I was essentially unaware of my apparent display of gratitude in the moment, least of all because I wasn’t focused on the feeling, but it was certainly a reality for me — I just didn’t consider that it was obvious to other people. ​
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I’m writing this blog post for myself as much as for anyone else’s benefit. My point in all this is that it’s all too easy to overlook the good stuff, even when it is right in front of your face. Even when it is on your face. Jesus reminds us to focus on His good blessings in our lives. There was so very much to be anxious about during our run of performances. There is so very much to be anxious about in our daily lives, in the world around us. Even as people reminded me each night of the very positive impact we were having on them and even as they reminded me of the wealth of blessings for which I could be grateful as a father in this family of performers, I was still tempted to gaze upon the plains of anxiety about … whatever. Screwtape doesn’t care so long as we gaze there and not upon God’s blessings. 

Each night, God sent people to remind me of the true value of our performances. And ultimately, all we were doing was celebrating Jesus’ birth and bringing some Christmas joy into the hearts of those who were present. This is something our “enemy” (the real one) wants to derail in any way possible. Anxiety is a very potent weapon in his diabolical arsenal. 

It’s worth noting that Jesus doesn’t give a formula for avoiding anxiety. Instead, He tries to refocus our attention in the midst of our natural anxiety towards all that is right and true and good, and in doing so, we can find peace in Him. His peace was present in the eyes and words of the grateful people who reminded me each night of the blessings present in my own life and in our family. He doesn’t tell us we can’t be anxious, just that we should try to look past it, to nullify it, to make it useless, to make it wither away in the overwhelming light of His blessings. All we have to do is look for them and focus on them - they are certainly there. And they are there for you, always. 
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Easier said than done, for sure. But the instructions are clear. And with practice, easier. Just keep practicing. Anxiety is pointless.

(Trying to be) In His peace,
Dalton

celebration of Christ’s birth, with candlelight services, was a beautiful way to serve our congregation. The Deacons were honored to assist with both services, and I am happy to report that all the candles were lit without problems. There were 545 attendees at the 4:00 pm service, a new record! In 2025, 1st Pres continued to grow. The difference in attendance on Sundays today as compared to a year ago is significant. The pews are consistently filled, and we are now offering overflow seating in Krueger Hall. This provides comfortable seating and a big screen TV to view the service, with easy access to coffee and donuts. We continue to welcome new families and children, while staying steadfast in our commitment to serve our community. We have also met our Capital Campaign Goal, ahead of schedule. The future for 1st Pres looks very bright. We are blessed to have Pastor McLane as our leader.

Personally, 2025 was an interesting and challenging year for me. I continued to be very involved with church service and, as a Deacon, helped organize the Spring and Fall Kick-off Potlucks, as well as the much-anticipated Christmas Potluck and Chili Cook-off. Our winner this year was fellow Deacon Karen Grace! The challenging part was that I managed to seriously injure my right shoulder, overdoing landscaping work on our property. As it turned out, I needed to have a complete shoulder replacement in September and am still continuing to recover from that. Hopefully, I have learned my lesson this time.
 
One other challenge for me was to help train my youngest son’s new puppy, Cooper. Spencer and his wife, Jordan, live with me, and the puppy was a bit of a surprise. Especially since they had an out-of-town trip planned shortly after Cooper came home. He is an adorable 10-week-old black Labrador that Spencer plans to use for duck hunting. Like Pastor McLane, this is his favorite type of outdoor sport. Five days of watching Cooper continually was exhausting. Trying to encourage him to sleep at night, ask to go out when needed, and remember that furniture is not edible are all skills we are still working on.
 
I am looking forward to whatever 2026 holds, and I hope you feel the same. We are very blessed to have a Savior who loves our Church and all of us.

​In His Name, Ellen
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everyone, my life is busy. I have a lot going on. But this year, knowing that my immediate household would be home, I decided to take two weeks off (minus a few days as a cashier at Tim’s Special Cut Meats, which could be a blog in and of itself), and be present for those who put up with me day-to-day. Next year, they may all prefer that I NOT do that, but I’ll keep you posted. As for the moment, it was totally worth the effort and simply fun. Resolutions, goals, values. All are important for determining who you are and what defines you, but in the end, what’s the action item? Are these the standards by which we should measure our lives?

I don’t typically make New Year’s resolutions. Are resolutions important? Yes! It’s a fresh start. A new beginning. A second chance. My not enjoying resolutions might come as a surprise, as I’m very competitive. I love a good game night. I love for my team to win. I am a go-getter, and I remember on one of my very first teaching jobs, one of the negatives in my evaluation was that I “was a go-getter and unhappy with leaving things status quo”. I look back at that and still roll my eyes, as if that was a bad thing. I believe in culture and tradition, but not at the expense of learning and forward progress. I impact a lot of lives every week, and if I can find a way to make that positive, I do it at any cost (one that is usually picked up by Steve — lol!)

Obviously, as you now know, I’m competitive. Making a resolution and not achieving it is highly unsatisfying. I don’t like that. Goals? Yes. I usually make seasonal goals. Last summer, I was determined to lose 30 pounds by walking up and down the hill that we live on. By July, the whole neighborhood was involved in my 8 miles a day and my fairly impressive tan (unless you’re a dermatologist, in which case the word "impressive" is not appropriate, as I learned in August!).

Did I achieve the goal? No. And I was disappointed. Maybe next summer. Every school year, we’re required to write down our goals, and I always come up with something. This year, the goal is for all of my 5th graders to read and locate every note on the treble clef staff from Middle C to high G on a keyboard. In terms of goals, I feel like I’ve made it in life. I love my jobs. I love where I live. If Safeway has the fruit on sale that I like to add to my Cheerios — I’m happy. And I love it. It's hard for me to come up with significant life goals right now.

I’ve been involved in several things that have forced me to identify my values. It was hard for me to nail them down, and I had to think a long time about it. I finally recognized my top three core values as honesty, generosity (in terms of time, attention, and, when possible, financial support), and gratitude. There is no doubt that most things I undertake turn out successful because of the team of people behind me, making it happen, including those who are visible and those who are not. When you see the band, the choir, and the kids on stage all at the same time, it’s because two of the three groups are entirely self-sufficient. And because Deborah’s head and eyes are doing as much work as her hands over there on the piano. And I am grateful for all of them.

The sermon on resolutions and being transformed by God, where we’re at, resonated with me on several levels. It’s easy to define yourself by your latest benchmark, whether it's a new resolution, a definition of your values, or a goal. But it’s not always the simplest task to take a few steps back and realize the impact of your actions on your life path and the lives of others. The fact that my perspective affects those with whom I have relationships has taken YEARS for me to understand fully. But it’s SO TRUE. Your resolutions, goals, and values may help you determine who you are and who you want to be, but in the end, it’s your connections with others that determine your happiness factor. Be happy. Engage with others. Be on a team. (I lean toward joining a choir, but you know — wherever you feel like your strength is … ) :-)

Joyfully yours, Renee