Christmas Time!!!

        I love, love, love Christmas time! Not for all the shopping, cooking, cleaning and wrapping presents....but for the fact that we are celebrating the birth of our SAVIOR!! I love it. I have made it a habit to read the account of Christ's birth over and over during the month of December (of course I read it other times too!). One Christmas, I hope to celebrate is Israel. How amazing would that be?
        I love that everybody is nicer during Christmas time! Well except on Black Friday, I signed up to be holiday help at Kohl's this year and people were running inside the store when it opened at 3AM!! Another great thing about this time of year is that our church volunteers to check shoe boxes for Operation Christmas Child. I have gone for the past three years as a leader with the youth group. This was our first year going with the adults and we had a lot of fun. I loved seeing the letters kids wrote to the recipients of their shoe boxes. I also loved seeing how much care went into selecting items for each box. A few things inside the boxes were: crayons, jolly ranchers, hair ties, hair brushes, tooth paste, tooth brushes, chap stick, coloring books, baseballs, soccer balls, clothes, gloves, beanies, stuffed animals and the list goes on and on. I loved it. The boxes we sorted through were headed to the Philippines. I was excited to hear that because countries over in that area of the world are dear to my heart. A friend of mine was able to distribute some of these shoe boxes last year in Mexico and give a message to the kids. I would love to do that!

    

both pictures are of kids getting shoe boxes...how cute are they??

                       I also love that Christmas music is on the radio already! I was reminded of my recent trip to China after hearing a "Charlie Brown Christmas" song. It brought a smile to my face. This is because we played that movie for our students to watch and learn a bit about American culture. We played it in English once and again with Mandarin subtitles. It was a great reminder to me to pray for those precious people we got to work with.

                 Be sure to remember what we are celebrating. Its the birth of our Lord and Savior, who came to earth to die for us. What a blessing that is. What a great thing to celebrate. What a great God we serve. 

Matthew 1:23

"BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL," which translated means, "GOD WITH US." 

~N