Nativity Goofs

Sorry about the long delay between posts recently. As some of you may have heard, I am in the States! Ignite has been extremely generous and has sent me home for the Christmas and New Year season! I am very grateful. The time I've spent with my family this week has done wonders for my homesickness. I was packing and boarding a plane last week, so I didn't get around to blogging.

So here we are in the middle of the holiday season, with Christmas over and New Years on the way. And that usually means a time full of parties and friends and loads of goodies that would satisfy even the hungriest sweet-tooth. It was wonderful having my mother's home-cooking for Christmas dinner and having 2 of my grandparents with us.

Back in Cardiff, the Sunday before Christmas we held the annual children's Nativity at church. We had angels and a star and one shepherd. We had Mary and Joseph and baby-doll Jesus. It was very cute, watching these children in their costumes trying to all get to their places while the narrators read. And of course it was ridiculously cute when one of the 9 year old narrators read about the "athletic host" rather than the "angelic host."

And during the second show when the narrator read about Mary having a baby and Mary would usually bring out the baby-doll Jesus, this time she froze. She realized that she forgot to bring baby Jesus up front with her! The narrators, not noticing the missing element of the show, kept reading as Mary pointed frantically to the back of the small church to where she left the baby Jesus. One of volunteers who had helped with the production went to the back of the church and was going through the back room that we used for a changing room, riffling through coats and costumes until she finally found the baby Jesus. By the time she brought the baby to his mother, the angels had finished their lines and the shepherds were already with Mary and Joseph, trying to figure out where to look if Jesus is not in Mary's arms.

Funniest nativity I've ever seen. It was hard to keep my laughter silent! It was altogether very sweet, and the pastor even managed to work the missing Jesus into his sermon, saying that we often forget to put Jesus in the center of Christmas, just as we forgot to put Him in the center our nativity.

I hope you all have had a magnificent Christmas, and I want to thank you again for all of your prayers and the financial support you've given. You are such a blessing. Happy New Year!