A Christmas Blitz of Activity
There was a plea for prayer….
and there was the answer.
And if a picture is worth a thousand words…
it saves me a lot of typing…
Christmas Party with classmates at
Atlanta Westside Charter School
“But to each one of us, grace has been given as Christ apportioned it…” Eph. 4:7 And to show me this, God who gave us the grace to pull off this event, also apportioned a grace to one of the third grade girls who has been wanting to start a Bible study for her classmates…So now we are looking to start one this spring! God already had in mind how He was planning on watering the seeds planted at this event…and I didn’t need to know HOW, I just needed to know He WOULD.
*Before I go on the next day’s events, after the girl’s Christmas party we were able to move one of the families who was living with us into their new home! After four months of sharing this Shalom house, they were able to branch out and start their own! Both families were excited to have their own space again!
Christmas Cookies and Crafts with Shalom City Church Kids
My sweet friend, Andrea, brought her family down to help run this afternoon event. We did the Christmas lesson, had the kids read Luke 2, read through the Candy Cane parable, and rotated stations making crafts, decorating Christmas stockings, and decorating cookies. We then loaded the kids up and took them to the fire department and police department to deliver stockings, Bibles, cookies and many “thank you for serving our community” ‘s to our service men and women. (who literally risk their lives daily to serve in this area)
Shalom City Church (Sunday Evening Gathering)
Quick testimony of the power of prayer…the previous week, we had a sweet, intimate small group of people for our evening gathering. Everyone spent the worship and teaching time in a Danny-led prayer time for our community, our city, and our individual needs. The next week, there were SIXTY people in our house (30 adults and 3o kids) for Shalom night…including new people, and people who hadn’t come in a few weeks…
Amazing things happen when we don’t just talk about prayer but do prayer.
To use The Twelve Questions of Christmas as a teaching tool, just click here.
Pick it. Wrap it. Give it.
~Christmas Present Outreach~
Moms cleaned out gently used toys. Other moms offered garages as drop off spots. Sweet Gospel partnership was solidified with our friends at Paradise Baptist Church who graciously opened their doors to host the event. A web of people coordinated to load up cars and tote twenty boxes of toys down to Grove Park so that we could offer a last resort “Christmas shopping” option for people in our community. Friends came down to help sort and set up. People showed up HOURS early and waited by the door in order to be able to pick out gifts for their loved ones. Each attendee picked one toy, one book, a stuffed animal and a Jesus film for each child in their family, and were able to wrap it, have their family prayed over, and then take a trash bag load of gifts back to their homes for a fun Christmas. Some of the kids of volunteers got to go “shopping” amongst the leftovers for their siblings and it was a joy to see those kids excited about giving….all this came about in two week’s time (planning and executing)…and a lot of prayer.
