Christmas Play, etc...

We had our local church Christmas play yesterday evening. Things really went well. First, yesterday morining we had a nice service, with Christmas carols, and I read the Christmas story. I always love to tell that story. Earlier in the month I took us through the foundational parts of the story. I started with some Old Testament prophecies, than went into the parallels in the lives of Zacharias, Elisabeth, and Joseph and Mary. They each had their encounters with angels acting as God's messengers. They each had either fears, or concerns which were put to rest by the angels encouragement. I love the part of the story where Mary visits Elisabeth and the Holy Ghost moves. In the Spirit, John recognized Jesus. Such a beautiful story. Anyways, we finished off with each one in attendance (those who wanted to) sharing a special Christmas memory, or something that makes this time special to them. It is always really neat to hear peoples different perspectives about Christmas and family. It was one of those things that is possible when you have a smaller congregation.
So, last night we held the Christmas program. It is one we got from a Sister in the church down in Alabama, Sister Washburn. It was really good. Since we are so small, we have to find something that can be done with a few people. Counting me (narrator) and the director, we had six people. That is our entire congregation!!! So when we plan something like this we invite EVERYBODY!! We have this fear of putting on a program for ourselves. Poor Brother Junior stands the chance of being the whole audience! Fortunately God blesses us every year with a good crowd. Our families kick in. We were a little disappointed, honestly that neither mine nor Marsha's family were with us. They had other plans, either at their own churches, or otherwise. That's still hard for us to swallow at times. But our church family is so good, so that helps. We had twenty-four in attendance! That equalled our attendance record! Brother and Sister Hargraves came up from Corbin mission, and Sister Betty Fowler and her son Jonothan came down from Greenup. That along with a bunch from the Lane family, and we had our crowd! Thank God!
Something we work hard at in our little church is not getting a cae of "small-church-itus". That is where you always say "We just can't do _________ because we are just too small." Our people are gamers. We just go ahead and find a way to do it! God always provides what we need.