Christmas Eve

I forgot something WAY back when...

For the weeks leading up to Christmas, our youth group put together gifts for people who had to work Christmas Eve night, and were not able to be with their families. They handmade different kinds of ornaments, they made peppermint hot cocoa mix to put in christmas mugs, and peppermint fudge mix for people to make in the microwave. They also printed verses on little decorative pieces of paper that they tied to the gifts.

Then Christmas Eve night, we set out to hand these gifts out. We went to 2 nursing homes, the sheriff's office, the grocery store, the Dollar Store, 2 gas stations, pizza hut, and a few small restaurants that were open (we closed our restaurant early that day). All in all I believe we gave gifts to nearly 80 people. We looked them each in the eye and told them "Thank you for working tonight". We had one lady in the nursing home follow us through the whole building thanking us, another lady at the gas station said, "you really brought me a gift? I don't know what to say!" with tears in her eyes. It was pretty awesome.

I hope that the kids got as much out of that as I did. I was very proud of them for sacrificing their family time that night to go out and do something nice for others. Hopefully projects like this will plant a desire to do good in their hearts, and as they become adults, hopefully they will plant those same seeds in their children and any others they come in contact with. Stuff like this makes the world a better place, every little bit helps.

I'm gonna preach for a minute: So Jesus didn't come to Earth and talk about "how" to worship him, what our worship services should look like, what songs we sing, or anything. In fact, it's very hard to get a sense of any worship service in Jesus' day that looks anything like what we call "church". But over, and over, and over, he talks about helping orphans, the poor, our neighbor, widows, those in prison, those who are lost. He never said, "you saw me hungry and gave me food... and a christian tract". He says, "you saw me hungry and you gave me bread." He is interested in relationships  and bringing heaven to earth by being compassionate, having open eyes for opportunities to help others. THAT is the Good News of the Bible. By starting these relationships,  others will want the joy that you have found in giving. It is THERE that they will see what Jesus was talking about, the Good News, and desire to be in His family.

That night taking thank you gifts to people, was a far more holy worship service to our awesome God and creator, than I've ever experienced in a church building. I 100%  believe that it is beneficial for Christians to come together and learn and worship and grow together, and I believe it's crucial. But I think a lot of us use that as our scapegoat to not actually have to get out there and get our hands dirty and DO something to reflect what God really wants us to be like Monday thru Saturday.

Ok. I'm off my soap box. I don't have good pictures of this event because I didn't want people to think we were just giving these gifts out to glorify ourselves and get to show off pictures. But here's some silly photos of the kids working on the project - every so diligently :)

I know this is 2 months later, but I ran across these photos & wanted to brag a little bit on the awesome kids we get to serve.