Our Christmas Program

This past Sunday our church put on it's Christmas program. The morning service involved our choir singing as well as the younger kids getting up to do their special songs. As fun and good as that was the evening program was even cooler....literally! But here's the bad news - during the a.m. service my camera died after 3 pictures, and for the evening events I forgot to even take the camera. So, from the entire day, I got 2 lousy pictures....

Thankfully this picture is almost enough to capture a special glimpse of what happened=) Alana denies pulling up her dress, however, I don't think she realized that gathering it up in your hands and bunching the fabric together had the same effect as pulling it up=) And, yes, she is wearing cowboy boots as she has no other Sunday shoes! Cute, huh?!?!

And here is our choir - we only sang 3 songs but, I have to say, the most enjoyable part was our Sunday afternoon practices that often led to some pretty silly moments=)

In the town of Hot Springs, where our church Calvary Baptist is located, there is an annual holiday celebration called "Christmas in the Hills". There are different events that take place over the weekend including a tour of decorated homes, a Christmas Arts and Crafts Fair, a parade, a ceremonial tree lighting, etc. Well, this year, Calvary was given the opportunity to take charge of the Living Nativity which, I think, is the final event on the program. The traditional thing they do is line some kids in costumes up on the big VA staircase and sing Christmas carols. This year however, our church took a different approach. CBC wants to reach the community, and in this country how many churches would be given a blank slate to do as they wished in a town sponsored Christmas activity???

So, some people in our church put TONS of work and preparation into what we did last Sunday night. Six drive-through Biblical scenes were put together, props and staging built, volunteers recruited, cookies made, and so that some part of the yearly tradition would remain the same, temperatures plummeted=) As cars approached, the ladies from our church greeted them with a plate of cookies and a CD to put in their car that narrated the drive, those of us who volunteered met at the church before hand and got into our lovely costumes, and the evening began. There was a manger scene, Jesus feeding the 5,000, the cross, an empty tomb...all in hopes of presenting the gospel to our town and that those with the CD in their cars would listen to it again and again.

It was a great time!! Matthew was Jesus in the feeding of the 5,000 while the rest of us were part of his hungry followers. Some 'wise men' had altogether too much fun dressing up in silk and lace, some angels angelic robes were too short, and some little children ate snow off the ground instead of the 'loaves and fish' Jesus and his disciples distributed (any guesses who that might have been?). But we hope that we had an effect just the same! After it was over we went back to the church to thaw out and eat some chili and laugh together over the fun we'd had. We all voted to do it again next year=)