"It's been a long time" along with "The back-up singer" and "High-tech shepherds"

Well, folks, I'm sorry to have been so out of touch lately. Don't take it personally - we are actually out of touch in every way. Due to the quitting of a satellite TV employee which delayed our receiving service and the fact that we live 6 miles outside of a rural town and therefore don't receive a signal we can pick-up with bunny-ears, we haven't even watched the news since the beginning of December! We are also too far out of town for DSL, so we are using the library computers until we have the Internet hooked up at the church.

We are moved into our new house, though. Praise the Lord! We still have painting to do and because of that we still have picture-less walls. I'm going to be working on putting out some of the "pretties" that will make our house feel more like a home. Please pray for us and we discuss a land line with the previous owners and the telephone company. There is a "situation" and/but as this is a small town we don't want to start off on the wrong foot. Michael will be talking with the telephone company today to see what info we can find out and we will be meeting with the previous owner tomorrow.

Now on to the promised funny stories from our Christmas season at our new church.

"The back-up singer"
The church has been very excited that Michael has musical talent and they were happy to welcome me onto the praise team, as well. Michael sang a special one of the Sunday mornings before Christmas. I was his back-up singer. Seriously - it wasn't even a duet because I didn't sing half the time! So, after the service we were talking to people as they left and one family came up to us and told me (the back-up singer) what a wonderful voice I had. I don't say this to pat myself on the back, I just still can't get over it! Michael sang such a beautiful song, while he accompanied himself on the guitar, and I got the compliments! I said that I was just the back-up singer and they proceeded to tell Michael that he had a pretty good voice, too. Thank goodness my husband is humble, otherwise we might have had problems (and I wouldn't be sharing this story with you) :) We've been having lots of laughs.

"High-tech shepherds"
I've seen Christmas shows on TV where, in the children's Christmas play, all the kids come wearing their bathrobes with bath towels on their heads. I've never seen anything like that in person. Perhaps that's because I've never lived anywhere where children regularly have bathrobes - I guess it's cold enough here that that's a regular thing. I must admit that I've been using mine more and more. Anyway, at least half of the kids in our church's Chrismas play were wearing their own bathrobes for the performance. That's just some fun background info. On to the shepherds. There were several groups of shepherds divided by age and therefore ability. Some groups had lines to memorize and the 4-6-year-olds sang a song. They came up to the front of the stage while everyone else took their places around the manger, admiring the baby Jesus. Most of them stayed at the front singing the words to "Away in a Manger" while they were accompanied by the piano. But there were two who were no dummies. They put two and two together (that they were singing and that the praise team uses microphones on Sunday mornings when they sing) and started trying out the microphones that were lying to the side of the stage. They kept picking up one after the other, over and over again, in hopes that they would find one that was on and become the star of the evening. I thought that was pretty good for two 4-year-olds. I think at least one of my nieces might have been in that crew :)

The new year is here now. Michael challenged the church to commit to reading the Bible through this year (thanks Pastor Paul for the idea). The Women's Sunday School class has decided to be brave and try to accomplish this even with all their kids and their work so we will be studying on Sundays what we have been reading the past week. Please pray for us as we get settled into the church and learn all the things we don't know yet (like exactly what people have to do to become members). Please also pray that God will send to me the job He has picked out for me already and that we will have the patience and financial planning to wait!

We love you all, hope you were blessed as you celebrated Christ's birth, and pray that God will draw you closer to Himself in the new year.