Celebrating All the Holidays in Indy!!

Where has the time gone. Looking back at my last blog I realized that a lot of time has gone by since I have taken the time to sit down and share what Ben and I have been doing for the holidays. Ben and I have stayed in Indiana for all of the holidays thus far. I (Christina) will not earn any vacation time from my job until the beginning of January, and there was not enough time during the holidays to go to the west coast to visit family so we stayed put at home. For Thanksgiving we started off our day going to the park and playing flag football with the youth and young adults from the church. We had a great turn-out of about 50 people come to play. I learned really quickly that flag football is not my thing. I felt as though I was running in circles trying to figure out what I was doing. I took over watching the youth pastors 3 year old son, which was much easier. That evening the youth pastor and his wife hosted the young adult group for a potluck Thanksgiving dinner. It turned out to be a wonderful, meaningful evening with a group of our new friends. We were blessed to have a place to spend Thanksgiving since we could not be with our family.

Next came the very busy season of Christmas. We had several great parties and celebrations that we got to be apart of. I will only mention a few of the highlights. One of the highlights from Church was the Christmas program that we had a week before Christmas. Ben had the opportunity to put together a short play for the children to perform during the program. He wrote a play based off of Luke 2 and each of the children played a part. You will see in the picture the angels, which are the kindergartners that Christina works with on a regular basis. They did a wonderful job, as did all the children and the play turned out great. A highlight for me (Christina) was a Christmas party that the youth pastors wife Grace and I put on for the women of the young adult group. We spent many weeks planning for this event and felt that it turned out really nice. We had dinner as a group, sang Christmas carols, decorated sugar cookies and made cookie jars that we could give away as presents. We had many new women join us for the event, which was wonderful because now they are coming to our young adult group on a regular basis. We love to see the growth in our young adult ministry.

Ben and I had a great time celebrating Christmas in our new home. We had fun getting a tree and other fun decorations to make our house look festive. Ben and I kept our tradition of looking at Christmas lights on Christmas Eve. We landed on a gold mine when we found a house that was not only decked out with lights, but they had it set to music on a certain radio station. They had a sign outside of their house that told what radio station to tune into and then you could watch the light show. It was amazing and utterly outstanding. We can't wait to go back next year. Christmas evening we went to Chicago to spend a few days with our friends. We had a great time traveling around seeing people we had not seen since we left in July. Again, it was nice being amongst friends when we couldn't be with our family. The last major celebration we had was a New Years party that we hosted last night. We had about 23 people come through the house to visit and to ring in the new year. We even had a time of sharing/reflecting on this past year and praying for the year ahead. It made the night really special.

Soo... another year has gone by and Ben and I know that we have much to be thankful for. It has been a full year, but one of many Blessings and the Lord's direction. Ben and I look forward to this next year and what the Lord will do in and through us for his glory.