New Year Approaches!

I wanted to write a few sentences, (which certainly won't do it justice), about our Christmas program; our very first Christmas program! The program was on December 18th and was complete with Ginny and children doing the "Christmas Play" which had characters and animals all around the manger and displayed the birth of Jesus, which really is the heart of Christmas. The kids did a great job with Jeremiah even playing the part of the baby Jesus! I may be wrong, but I bet we were the only church in Roanoke with a live Jesus in the manger. Along with Jeremiah, Emily, Benjamin, Rachel, (who was an excellent sheep!), Cameron, and a few others all helped make the program a hit. A new addition, Andrew, who is the brother of Danielle, did the part of the narrarator. Andrew is Danielle's brother, who is one of my Driver's Ed. students from Salem High School. Along with Danielle, 3 more of my students were there on this special service, so that was good. In total we had 42 people so that was very encouraging and the second largest crowd we ever had! Praise the Lord for His goodness and faithfulness. For other parts of the service, I had asked Beth, Joey, and Melanie to give their testimonies; all three were very special and unique in their own right. Beth told of how God had touched her heart a few weeks earlier and helped her to put away her anger towards Him after she had lost her very young son in a car crash around 10 years ago. Her words were touching and really impacted those who listened. Joey's words spoke of how recently he had to depend on the wisdom from God's people to help him avoid being involved in something that would have depleted his savings. He showed how we need to seek Godly counsel for wisdom when we are not sure of what to do and to avoid going off of our "gut" and ending up making a big mistake. And lastly was my sister Melanie, who continue to amaze me with the change in her life; the change that has occured and is still occuring. She spoke of how she has "saturated" her life with reading the Bible daily, telling her children Bible stories before bedtime, and just in praying and seeking God constantly for helping her make the necessary changes in her life that will benefit the family and honor God. She has changed so much and is such a blessing to me both at the church and in the Moser family. And then my message was short but simple just reminding folks that Jesus still seeks to change everyone's life, not only at Christmas time but all the time. And just as Mary allowed the Holy Spirit to come into her life and heart and make her the new person that she became, God desires to do the same in us yet today. God just blessed us with a great day. And then we got to sit and enjoy a great dinner catered with food from County Cookin' which everyone just loved, so it was a great day indeed. And now we sit on the verge of a new year......I wonder what God has in store??