Christmas 2009 has come and gone. It was filled with joy and beauty, but also had moments of sadness when a snow storm caused us to have to cancel our Christmas Sunday service. We ministered to the hurting among us with the Blue Christmas Service. We had wonderful music programing thanks to Greg Lowther, our new organist. The Christmas pageant exceed our expectations with our young Holy Family and live baby Jesus (Ethan). The brunch following the pageant got rave reviews as the Sheltons worked their magic in the kitchen yet again. The Advent Bible studies prepared our hearts and minds to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus. The manger was filled once again with mittens and scarves for the needy, and we filled 18 boxes for Operation Christmas Child. It was a wonderful time. But now it is almost January.

January is not a time when we usually think about Christmas unless the after-Christmas sales make us think about buying gifts for next year and putting them away. Several people have suggested to me that we have Christmas every month by planning ahead to fill even more Christmas boxes for 2010. If we do a little each month, we can probably at least double the number of boxes we fill. So I challenge you to do just that. Start now and let’s see what we can do.

It might interest you to know that in our collection area, 14,824 shoeboxes were turned in. It was good to play even a small part in that effort. We were part of the mission outreach to children by Samaritan’s Purse lead by Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist Billly Graham.

So Merry Christmas in January 2010.