Our Merry Little Christmas/Boxing Day

Merry Christmas everyone! I would like to share with you a bunch of pictures having to do with how my family celebrates Christmas. It starts with Christmas Eve service.

Here are some pictures of how we decorated the church for the candlelight service...This is actually on boxing day as I was way too busy to take pics at the service. I didn't include how the piano was decorated with five hurricane candle lamps or the beautiful table that had the food on it...Trust me, they were gorgeous! Anyhow here are a few:





So that was our Christmas Eve...Now I would like to show you our Christmas tree and some of the food we had. Now I mentioned last year that we don't do the traditional turkey supper. Instead we each choose a favorite dish or two and that makes up our meal...So here is what you are seeing...First you are seeing our Christmas tree. Of course front and center is our awesome nativity scene...You can click on the pics to see them bigger (I hope). Then you see our napkins and some raspberry bubbly and my favorite pop...Pineapple! Then there is our supper. We had surprise spread, shake and bake chicken wings, stuffed mushrooms, homemade beef jerky, curly fries (4 yr old's pick), chocolate covered strawberries, grapes, steamed carrots and asparagus, some pickles and olives and some ham coil and a bit of imitation crab. It was so yummy. To decorate the table I moved the nativity scene to the center of the table to help us remember why we are celebrating. It was so yummy. I have TONS of food left over!





Finally, I would like to share another tradition we have. A lot of people have Christmas stockings...and in those stockings is usually a piece of fruit. Well instead of the traditional apple or orange that my husband and I grew up having...We decided to always have a pomegranate in the toe (however this year we opted to have pomegranate juice) and then we choose a different fruit to share/learn about and we eat it at breakfast on boxing day. This year we had a Dragon Fruit. It was pretty good. It seems to be a cross between a kiwi and a pear. Here are the pictures of it:





Well, that is just a little picture of our merry little Christmas...How was yours?

My Community

I have to say...I LOVE where I live. My community is so loving and caring. Here is just one example of why I really love this community:

Word got out that a family (not a rich family, poor family, popular family...one with significant influence etc.) needed support. So my community that I love stepped up. This family recently found out that their eight year old boy has cancer. This means that he had to travel to a different city to receive radiation and chemo treatments. Now, the Dad of this family is with his son while living at the hospital which leaves the Mom at home with her daughter (who my daughter danced with last year) AND her newborn daughter who is just six weeks old. To top it off, the Dad just recently donated a kidney to a family member so took time off of work to heal and he was just getting back to work when his son got sick. So here is what my wonderful community did:

1) The call went out for prayer. (This was pretty much the first thing that happened)
2) A group (the kid's school, the Dad's company and a community program that the kids attend) organized a benefit brunch.
3) A trust fund was set up at a local bank for the family.

Today, my family attended the brunch where a silent auction was set up. It was just so wonderful to see so many people come and surround this family. I was able to see the Mom, hug her and let her know that we are here for her. I live in a wonderfully supportive community.

After the yummy brunch, we headed to church where I was able to spend time with my church family. I feel full in every way today. God bless my community and church family who make my life so rich.

An Update

Hello everyone...

I am sorry it has been so long since I have been here. Tis the season! It is super busy these days and yet I am feeling calm and peaceful.

Our kettle campaign is going well, hamper applications are in, our "Adopt A Family" program is well on the way and our hampers are being put together! This is a very generous community and I feel blessed to be a part of it.

Also, my Mom and Dad were here for almost a week. We did such a wonderful job of creating a holiday feel that it seems like Christmas should be over already. I am glad it is not.

This year is different. Last year was our first year as Salvation Army officers and the Christmas season was very different. I felt tense because I was learning all about ministry here. Now with one year under my belt, I feel GREAT! I feel organized and as if I have a good handle on all that takes place during the Christmas season here.

Although Christmas will never be the same as I remember it as a kid...we are creating new traditions and I still enjoy the entire Christmas season. It is super fun!! Well, I have to admit...I am so exhausted so my post is quite thoughtless and boring...I will get back into the groove later... :)

What are you doing for Christmas?

Kick Off CRAZINESS!

Yesterday was a crazy day. It was the kick off for our kettle campaign. This year we launched a new campaign called "Cash for our Community". We asked companies and individuals to take a jar and get creative on how to fill it. They were asked to come down to the Canadian Tire and drop off their jars between the hours of 12-5pm...Anyhow...Here is what went crazy...

We woke up that morning excited to "kick off our kettles" and that morning the guy we had hired to drop off/pick up kettles called in sick. What made it worse is that we had to assemble the new stands as well as drop them off. I also had to scramble to find someone to take the shift he signed up for from 10-2!! Anyhow, not a big deal...We just had to do what we had too. So we would get our girl to daycare and then drop the kettles off and race over to Canadian Tire to set up for the kick off. WELLL...we went to start the van to transport some larger items we needed for the kick off and...Yep! You guessed it, the van would not start! GRRRR! Thank God for a man in our church who has a truck and offered to help us out. I am thankful.

Anyhow, as the day went on we only received a total of 5 jars. We think this happened for a number of reasons: it is a new campaign so it will take a bit to catch on, we had a horrible cold snap, people just forgot...We know that there are more jars out there and the radio is going to remind people to bring them down to us sometime. Anyhow we set our kick off goal higher this year but we did not meet it. That is very disappointing but it is a new campaign still. We did manage to bring in about $4500-$5000 so that is GREAT! Even though it was down $3000 from last year, it is a good way to start our campaign. Plus we feel good about having our own campaign instead of copying another organizations campaign. So that in itself is a success.

Anyhow, I am officially counting down...After today I only have 19 days of kettle shifts to fill!! Actually less because of the "Adopt A Kettle" campaign! THAT has been very successful so far! Well, that is all I have for you today. I am going to go and look over my sermon and rest a little bit! Take care.

A Divine Meeting and A Spiritual Awakening

I wanted to tell you about a divine meeting I had on Monday. I woke up ready to head to my little girls daycare to have a meeting with the daycare director. We were going to talk about the daycare participating in a program that is new for us this year called "Adopt A Kettle". Also since the daycare is in a seniors home I wanted to invite the kids to join us as we do some caroling and pass out sunshine bags to the residents.

Well...God had different plans. We started our meeting by just talking and before we talked about the business we had planned, the daycare director ended up responding to God by giving her life to Him. Our meeting was right in the cafeteria and at that moment the cafeteria became holy ground. At that moment, this very ordinary place was transformed into a life changing place. It was here that we bowed our heads as she surrendered her life to Jesus. I am amazed at what God does.

I have always known that God doesn't always bring others to Him solely in the church. Actually recently it seems that more people are coming to Him outside of the building. Whether it was at the Thrift Store counter as was the case with one of my employees, sitting in my office with the mother of a member of the church, on the telephone with a woman recently widowed or in a cafeteria...God works wherever we allow Him to. We just have to be sensitive to God leading us and He will in turn lead others to Him.

Be open, be sensitive, get out of the church and be ready for the divine meetings.