Christmas Cheer

This Christmas we are trying to give more of ourselves and just enjoy the season and not get caught up in all the "stuff". On Thursday night my husband took me to a Christmas concert with Point of Grace and Phillips, Craig, and Dean. We both enjoyed it immensely and it really got me in the Christmas spirit. One thing that Point of Grace promotes is A Soldier's Hope sponsored by the American Bible Society. We live in a military town so this really interested us. Check out the link and see if it is something you might want to do.

Earlier in the fall we did boxes for Operation Christmas Child. My Sunday School class collects all year long and then we pack the boxes in October. Another opportunity for us was to adopt a child from WV. There are the military folks deployed that always get a box at Christmas too.I am telling all this so you can see the many opportunities there are to help others. There are CASA children that need adoption as well as those on Angel Trees. Some folks are using their couponing to fill boxes and provide gifts. Your local schools always know of students in need.

Yesterday two different groups at our church were getting gifts ready for the nursing home. It was a cold day and I really enjoy staying in by the fire and reading. I made myself get out to help those groups and I am so glad I did. I had to remind myself it is about giving your time as well and that has been our goal. Below are some pictures taken from yesterday.

We had to form an assemby line to make it go faster.

You can see we had some stacks going on.

  The men get a pair of socks, kleenex and candy.

 Here are some packages for women. They get fuzzy socks, colorful kleenex and some candy.

 The girls were putting red tinsel in ornaments. We added a fleur de lis stencil.

 Here are some notebooks that can be used as guest books for residents.

We also made smaller ones.

The finished ornament and a look at a fun day of doing for others.