I had all good intentions of posting up during December with all the details of Christmas activities, but in the busyness of life and getting everything sorted for all the various Christmas presentations, parties, outreach events, carolling etc, time just totally vanished and now...it's post Christmas. But I figure at least now it means I have some pics to put up about what has happened.
So not surprisingly, December was a pretty busy month. It was really nice that mum and dad arrived early December, just in time to celebrate Dad's birthday together.
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| Dad's Birthday Dinner |
We also had our cell group Christmas party, where we had a 3 non christian friends come along. We tried to run the night in a casual, 'normal' cell group style way - with extra food to celebrate. Even though it was a bit quiet to begin with, by the end of the night no one wanted to go home.
The week after we had our church carolling night. We started at the hospital in the wards, before visiting 5 other houses. Was awesome fun jamming with John, Em, Mayz & Biem throughout the night.
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| The muso's at the hospital |
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| carolling at the hospital |
On the 23rd, we got to celebrate Christmas with the kids in the morning SS, before the evening church xmas celebrations where the kids got to do a big presentation that included puppets, songs, them as mary, joseph, shepherds, and animals. We were keen to present Christmas in a slightly different way where we used the manger and the cross as the 2 common things that we think of when it comes to Jesus. However, rather than focus on the manger or the cross, we wanted to challenge everyone to think not about the manger or cross, rather WHO it was that lay in the manger, and hung on the cross. What we wanted to them to see by the end was that Jesus is King, Saviour and God.
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| The SS team |
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| Kids in action with the puppets |
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| Kids in action |
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| Em & Joseph as the centurion and soldier |
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| Time to freak out, first Thai song item of O Holy Night with solo to begin! |
Given that we had only really got the script ready for the presentation 2 weeks before, we decided it best to record the whole show and get the kids to lip sync. Meant a bit of extra work for me to record and edit the whole thing, but I think it went really well overall. Here are a few pics of the kids in action
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| Pretending to know what i'm doing |
Then on Christmas Day, we had another family cell group christmas party. Was a great night with over 50 people there. Apart from games for the kids, lots of food - mainly meat and token cabbage and corn for our greens, we were keen to use the night to challenge everyone to think about what it means for Jesus to be their wonderful counsellor, merciful saviour, everlasting father, prince of peace. I made up a thai version of 'The News' video and we played that to challenge people to be thinking about their need for a counsellor, saviour and prince of peace. I hope and pray that many were challenged that night to be thinking deeper about Jesus.
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| P'Daang helping with the games for kids |
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| Getting ready for the present exchange |
So after all the Christmas events, I've been pretty whacked. Lots of sleeping in and catching up on rest amidst spending time with the family. Lots to be giving thanks to God for, especially in all that he's been teaching me through this time.
