Christmas on Sunday?

What does Christmas mean to you? When I first heard that Christmas was on a Sunday I have to admit one of the thoughts that went through my head was... "well that will change my Christmas traditions".

This is actually a good thing for my husband because his family tradition was opening presents on Christmas Eve which I don't think I could ever get used to! Its Christmas morning for me!! When we found out that Christmas was on a Sunday this year I told him that every time Christmas is on a Sunday we can do it his way. So this year presents will be opened on Christmas eve.

There are some traditions he will get to keep from his family. Like Ben being able to read the Christmas story before presents are opened.

I met a girl a few years ago at a youth leadership summit. I want to share her facebook status from today with you. I agree with her wholeheartedly.

"First day of December and excited that this Christmas falls on a Sunday! What a special day to lay aside our traditions and not focus on our normal busy holiday routine. What a great opportunity to share with our children that it's not about running to the tree and opening gifts, but running to His house and seeing the true gift we were blessed with on this day? What an awesome day to make this a "He" day, not a "Me" day. I plan on kneeling at the throne of my King first thing this Christmas, not our Christmas tree." -Denise Sites 


I pray that each Christian this Christmas would be able to agree with the statement above. 


I heard of a church that decided to do 2 Christmas eve services and not hold church on Sunday Christmas day. It broke my heart and made me a little angry actually. 


I wonder how many churches will not hold service on the day we celebrate our Savior's birthday? Most come on the Sunday we celebrate his resurrection. Why wouldn't you want to come the day we celebrate God coming to earth? 


I'm guessing its because its hard to give up traditions. Please put aside your traditions and worship God with your church family. If you are visiting family for Christmas join them for church. 


Christmas is a Christian Holiday celebrating the day the God of the universe came down to live among us. Celebrating the birth of the man who died so that we could live. 


What are we telling the world if Christians skip church this Christmas? 

Thanksgiving

I was born in Canada and my mom is a Canadian citizen. I grew up celebrating Thanksgiving twice a year. Once in October in Canada and the other in November in the U.S. What I loved about that is that we would get the Turkey in October and we would often get to have homemade italian food for our American Thanksgiving as we celebrated our Italian heritage from my dad's side of the family.


This year is a very happy Thanksgiving for me. I am blessed with an amazing job and church. We have seen God do miracles. We are celebrating those miracles this Sunday in a special service actually!


My parents and youngest sister are driving now as I type to visit Ben and I and our new dog Max. Allison has never been here in SW Virginia. My parents haven't been here since I've had this position with the church. So I am excited to share with them a bit of my life here.


I am sad that they can't stay longer. I am sad that my dad has a bone in his knee that is badly bruised. Which means no long walk's or hikes which is one of my favorite parts of living in the Blue Ridge Mountains.


My brother-in-law lost his job not too long ago. A friend of mine lost a baby and a grandfather not too far apart. Another friend/co-worker has recently found out that her 12 year old son has type 1 diabetes.


There is time a to mourn, there is a time to be sad/angry. But in the situation we can still be thankful. As my amazing pastor pointed out this past Sunday.


 1 Thessalonians 5:18 "Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."


It's not give thanks FOR all circumstances, its give thanks IN all circumstances. Praying for those who are doing their best to be Thankful in the storm this holiday season. 


Thanksgiving started 3,000 years before the pilgrims landed over here on the Mayflower.


God told His people, the children of Israel, the people who were true believers, I want you to set aside a day in the fall.  It was called the Feast of Weeks or the Harvest Festival, at which they would bring an offering to God, express their thanks to God, share a banquet or a meal together.  

Thanks and Giving go together. Lets be thankful by giving back to the one who has given us so much. 

Ambassador?

What does it mean to be an Ambassador?

Well according to Webster it means:

1. : an official envoy; especially : a diplomatic agent of the highest rank accredited to a foreign government or sovereign as the resident representative of his or her own government or sovereign or appointed for a special and often temporary diplomatic assignment

    2 : an authorized representative or messenger

What does it mean to be an Ambassador for Christ? 2 Corinthians 5:20a So we are Christ's ambassadors; 

As the leadership of our church have recently been discussing this. I thought I would share some of my thoughts. 

We are to represent Christ to those here on earth. The Bible tells us this is not our home we are visitor's and foreigners here. We are to be showing the people Christ and the Kingdom of God as we represent Him with our life. 

What happens when we live in our flesh? When we live by our own desires and make this place our home and forget that we are only passing through? 

^{Galatians 5: 19} When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, ²⁰ idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, ²¹ envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

This passage referes to each one of us at some point. We've all had outbursts of anger, been selfish, jealous or envious, quarreled etc. 

Christ's Ambassador's cannot live that kind of a life. That is not representing Christ and His Kingdom. 

^{Galatians  5: 22} God's Spirit makes us loving, happy, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, ²³gentle, and self-controlled.

Lets strive for those character traits in verses 22-23. Being an Ambassador for Christ starts in the home and unfortunately sometimes those closest to you do not get the most patient, kind, and self-controlled you. 

God wants to help us! Lets allow Him to live and work through us today and every day! 

Day 4 & 5 in Haiti

On the 4th day we taught at a church in the city. It was a much different atmosphere. It was a newer church and they were very eager to learn and ready for a change. It was an indescribable feeling that we had as we realized that God was doing something big here and that he was using us. We were used at the very beginning of a great change in Haiti. 

The children could not fit in the meeting area to do our children's ministry. So the pastor took us to the yard of some people down the street. We did not stay there for much more than an hour because we were separated from our team and wanted to keep everyone safe. The children then followed us back to the church and got their nails painted as they quietly waited for the adults to finish. These children were much more well behaved. The translator you will see pictured below with me were taking care of the children. They were orphans and we complemented him on their behavior. 

Below is some pictures of the church in the city. 

Below is Camp Abraham a displacement camp. You can see they have moved up from tents to wooden structures.   

 Below is their water tanks that were empty. There was no well or water nearby either.

They were still in a crisis mode so we helped give out food. We do not give handouts with the way we do missions. Unless they are in a crisis mode and camp Abraham was. 

We hope to have someone come and live in the camp to have their own garden and harvest rain water then teach by example.  When we shared this with the leader of the camp he thought it was a good idea. When we go back to Haiti Camp Abraham may be one of our priorities. 

After visiting camp Abraham we went downtown to see the damage of the earthquake. It had been around 18 months and not much had changed. Still everyone in tents. No buildings really being repaired yet. It has a lot to do with their government or lack there of. A new president has been recently elected and there is some hope there. 

This is their capital building (the palace) Still in ruins 

A few of us got out of the car to take pictures of it. A man came up to us and told us that we dont' need to see that they call it "the house of the devil" there was a large sense of distain toward the government there. But again hope with this new president. A few seconds later the horn honked from our van and he was telling us to get back in because its not safe to be on the streets downtown. (Our teens stayed in the van with driver, Brian and another team member)

A catholic church that got destroyed

On our way to downtown we were told to put our camera's away because there were "gangsters" everywhere and it was very dangerous. Our driver then stopped for gas right in the middle of the "gangster" area. Lets just say we were thankful for the UN men at the gas station! Here are a few more pictures of the downtown area. 

3rd Day in Haiti

We spent our 3rd day in Archaea its out in the country and we passed the beautiful ocean on the way there. It was a couple hour drive to get there. I'm not sure how long it would have taken if the roads were smooth and clear of traffic, markets, and animals :-)

This was our most challenging day. I was nervous because I had to teach for the first time. During the teaching we had a lot of people standing up and asking questions that didn't really pertain to what we were teaching. Later on we were told that it was an older more traditional church and some of the members were trying to talk doctrine with us. Instead of about the tools we were sharing with them. It made me smile a bit because it reminded me of my experiences with some "trouble makers" or people "stuck in their ways" that i've met in churches throughout the years here in the States. The smile came as I realized how not so different the churches in Haiti are from those here in the U.S.

I was happy to see the youth in the church excited about ministry. One was proud of his role in the church (to tell the children to be quiet and listen) We were talking about how everyone has a different shape for ministry. The body is made up of different parts and each to do a specific thing.
 I was also able to share my testimony with the worship leader of the church the day before when we visited. My job was teaching on how to share your story. So the fact that he asked me my story the day before I had to teach was cool. It was God preparing me and telling me that I could do it. Because I was really nervous.

Day 4 in Haiti I will talk about another church we visited and how different it was from the one in Archaea.

Archaea as I mentioned in an earlier blog had children that played a lot more rough than the other area's we were at. It was challenging for our teens who were doing the children's teaching and games. But they did an awesome job!

 We did not get pictures of people teaching (that turned out) so I've just posted a few pictures from that day. There were some area's that had large puddles we had to drive through. (you will see in a picture) But it didn't rain once while we were there. It was very dry and dusty the whole time so we were wondering how that water got there and stayed there all week!

None of the tents below had been there before the quake. These are all displaced people.

The schools advertised with disney characters!

2nd day in Haiti

The plan for the 2nd day was to see the progress of the orphanage, the school and the church concerning their construction. All three were in different locations. So it was a lot of driving. We were able to see a bit of the city and the country all in this day. We got to see a nice view of the ocean.  Again the driving in Haiti is nothing you can quite explain without being there. Lots of bumps, swerves, honks and dust.

We stopped at a location where there were thousands of people buried after the quake. It was an emotional moment for me as I stood there with our Haitian brother and sister looking at all the crosses. My heart hurt for all those who were lost in the quake and their families left behind. Below are a few pictures from that location: 

I was impressed with how much they had of the school done. We played some games with these children. A few began to flick our ears and hit us trying to get us to "play fight" back. It wasn't something we were expecting. They seemed to be doing whatever they could to get our attention. It was actually a bit painful. Eventually we were able to get them to stop. I was so proud of our teen girls who spent most of their time with the children. They handled them well and shared the love of Jesus with them!
Below are a few pictures from that site:

We visited Pastor Rene's church in Delmas. The building was in the process of being cleared away after being torn down. It was cracked due to the quake and had to be rebuilt. Brian drew up the plans for the new church while we were there.


While at that site Terrie on our team saw the Scripture 2 Chronicles 7:14 on a man's shirt. Just a short while later she found pages of a creole Bible laying in the rubble and it was the section that had 2 Chronicles 7:14 in it. It was definitely a God moment. The scripture reads:
 Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.


While at that church we taught some of the kids there how to play kickball. It was hard for them to get the hang of it. They didn't understand that we were trying to get people out. They just enjoyed kicking and running the bases. 


Below are some pictures of the Delmas church site. 

Below is the progress being made on the orphanage: 

After our long day of traveling and visiting the different area's meeting the pastor's and people we would be teaching. We went back to Pastor Rene's home for dinner and to discuss our action plan for the next day. We debriefed on the roof and looked forward to the next day of teaching at the country church.