...beginning to look like Christmas

There’s a great joy in seeing other people glowing with excitement over getting to celebrate a simple Christmas activity. This evening as a YWAM base we had a decorating party, organized by yours truly!

It’s just the start of Christmas activities that I’m planning around the base for the Discipleship Training School students (45 in total), plus the staff working here. Tonight we put up a Christmas tree (lights and lovely, new, colourful ornaments I bought for $9 at Kmart). But I was also able to sort through some of he older decorations we have, and rarely use, and come up with colour-coordinated decoration sets for different areas around the base. I'm totally Martha Stewart at Christmas time, and I love it!

The young people living here right now got really excited to eat cookies, drink hot chocolate, dance and listen to Christmas songs, hang ornaments, and just feel at home even though they’re all away from their loved ones this holiday. The best thing for me was realizing that this was a Christmas many of them would never forget – their first and only Christmas in Australia. How amazing that I could help create a fun, family event for them to remember it by!

As part of my role as hospitality coordinator, I’m to create family events for the base. So Christmas is a perfect time to do just that. On top of the decorating party, I’ve also planned gingerbread decorating, an outdoor movie night with a big screen which I’m hoping will also be attended by some neighbourhood kids.

It’s really encouraging that all these international students are building into a new type of family for this holiday season. It’s a family that many of us never think we’ll experience. I know having grown up in a smaller family, the idea of spending the holidays with 80+ people never crossed my mind. But I don’t think I’d have it any other way!

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And they will call him Immanuel, which means God with us. Matthew 1:23 (NIV) 

Love has come For the world to know As the wise men knew Such a long time ago
Love Has Come, Amy Grant