Monday, December 21, 2009

What are the chances?

If you've been listening to UK news, or are in fact in Britain you'll have noticed the snow! As I write it's falling again. This will mean nothing to those in Canada and the coldest parts of America. We as a country stand still and watch in awe as the white stuff falls from the sky.

We venture out tentatively and take our flipping time to get any where. We're starting to dislike it, but we still enjoy the white out.

I'll post pictures of the snow duck the girlies and guys made on saturday night. We've had an enjoyable time in the snow, but things suffer, like church attendance and parties. Still the snow couldn't stop us enjoyng the Strictly final on Saturday.

Friends are fantastic. We were all on Team Cola this year. Was much fun cooking, drinking and eating all together. Both dishes made were a hit. The international influence on my cooking is becoming more obvious, thoough I still will quite happily bake.

I love this season, even if everything halts for the snow.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Success

I bring you a story of Nativity success!!!

Not that I thought it would be a complete failure. God and the performance nerves helped the whole thing massively. We had a whole church to perform to! It was awesome. I really loved it.

There were no horrid surprises. Just nice ones. Our Joseph this year put on a class act and got a laugh (he hadn't even said anything yet). The innkeepers spoke so clearly and all the narrators read very well. Angel Gabriel battled out of his sick bed to join the cast and Mary and Elizabeth were fake chatting really convincingly!

It's done for another 11days, we will be working with the children again for the 4.30pm Crib Service on Christmas Eve. All our other services will be on the Facebook page!

And at the end of it all I got a huge bunch of flowers for completing my PgDip! Lovely day!

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Mistletoe and Wine

As you may well have noticed Christmas is just around the corner.

This week has been my busiest pre-Christmas week. And it's not getting any easier. It's our Nativity play tomorrow morning at church. I can't imagine for one second that tomorrow is gonna be easy, but I'm sure that it'll be very fun.

The main thing is our cast seems to be made up of apathetic actors and actresses; apart from Joseph, he plays his part very, very well. We seem to have lost the real feeling of Christmas. There's joy and elation, hope and relief (probably mostly from Joseph), there's also scared and afraid (though we are told by the Angels not to be). There's no elecrticity in the air of what might be happening. Something much greater than ourselves, something not all about consuming.

I don't want to ban any present giving (I've spent my money) or be grumpy, I just want to understand the feelings behind Christmas.

I love songs too, music is great at this time of year. I have a Christmas CD that has been playng over and over at work and there are more than enough songs about Jesus coming. But we've missed that over the last ten years. My hat goes off to anyone who can make a hit about the real reason behind Christmas (and not just Cliff Richard).

Happy (nearly) Christmas! Enjoy!