It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!...*Ahem* A Few Weeks Late

Well, the snow came late, so I'm going to consider it okay for me to post a little bit late as well. We are actually very thankful that the snow held off during the week of Christmas because that allowed us to be able to visit most of our family, where we may not have made it if there had been much snow... But we sure are enjoying it now! Hope all of you are staying warm and enjoying the pretty view (assuming you have snow where you are).


A Liberty Chapel Christmas
The week before Christmas, Liberty Chapel had a special Christmas dinner and celebration. There was lots of yummy food...

Caroling at two nursing homes and one hospital....

 A delicious dinner of course....

It's possible that this was Josiah's and Charis' favorite part!

 And a time for the whole congregation to gather, with the kids sitting up front, listening to the Christmas story.
I was asked to read it and told that I could be a little creative with it if I wanted, so I borrowed the church's larger nativity, wrapped each character in wrapping paper, and let each of the kids pick one out. As I read the story of Jesus' birth and arrived at each new character, I had the kid with that character unwrap it and place it wherever (s)he wanted in the nativity. We even had one girl holding a light-up star (our Christmas tree topper from home) above the nativity to guide the wise men to their destination. Although leading this was a little out of my comfort zone, the kids had fun with it and so did I.

Cleland Family Christmas

We so appreciated being able to travel to Fort Wayne to be with family for a few days during the week of Christmas. We don't know where we'll be placed next summer or how often we'll be able to travel back to see family, so we are trying to savor every visit we can have during this year. 

Rollerblading Christmas Party with the Gideons (my stepdad's family)

Josiah LOVED passing out presents at each celebration!

Charis with Great Grandma Peggy (Gideon)

Cousins at the Cleland (Chris' dad's family) Christmas... Missing Chris' brother Sean!

Charis with her Great Grandma Cleland

Charis with her Great Grandpa Beck (on my dad's side)

Cousins! Charis, Deliliah, and Josiah at the Soliday's (Chris' mom's family)

Charis and Josiah got some books to share at our house.
Here Josiah says, "I read you Charis!" (He'll read the book to her. What a good big brother!)

Moms of busy toddlers, you might understand why I was SO excited to get this Black Friday deal!
This is GREAT for getting Josiah's jitters out when it's too cold to play outside!

We hope that you all enjoyed your Christmas festivities and that you had a restful and joyous time with family! As we begin this new year, let's commit together to keeping our eyes on Christ. As Liberty Chapel has continued the study of Romans both in the Sunday preaching and the smaller group Bible studies, I find that over and over we come back to the reminder in Romans 13:8-10: Love is the fulfillment of the law. As each of us thinks about this coming year, how we are to live, and what we'd like to accomplish, let's not forget that Christ is most glorified not when we complete our "to do" lists, but when we focus on loving Him and loving others.

36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment.39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:36-40