The cool thing about this Christmas is that we started thinking about it a few months ago when Advent Conspiracy was first introduced to the church. The focus has been to Worship More, Spend Less (on gifts), Give More (of ourselves) and Love All. Since the beginning of the school year we have heard a few messages from Pastor Scott about AC and had 3 different projects presented that we all, as a church, can participate in.
The first was Operation Christmas Child - which we did on November 8. See my previous post on this one....our final total for the morning was 376 boxes and raised more money than needed for shipping (an amount which escapes me now) - in this way we gave of ourselves and our resources.
Our second project will be the H2O project. This coming Sunday there will be a special offering for AC and all the funds that are donated will go to Living Water International so that a water source can be provided for a community that does not have clean running water for drinking, cooking, bathing etc. - this way is from spending less (or in Tom's case working more)
Project #3 will be in January...more details on that later.
As for Christmas here at home Tom and I are spending less on each other and we have decided to exchange 3 gifts each with a spending limit of $100. I got the idea of 3 gifts from our medical supplies rep that visits the station occasionally - and he is a Christian incidently. Last Christmas as we were visiting he shared with me how he and his family have been celebrating christmas and the gift thing really stuck with me. He and his wife have always given their boys 3 gifts each to represent the Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh that were brought to Jesus at his birth. Very cool! I'll have to let Chad know when he comes in next time how we changed our gift giving this year.
Today is my day to shop for Tom and I have everything all planned out - the weather looks like it will cooperate so that won't slow me down.
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