Up until now I have been writting "article style" more or less sharing views on different subjects I have been thinking about. I am sensing the Lord would like me to move into a more "personal style" I still want to share what God is showing me from the Word but also a bit more of who I am and what is going on in my life and how those things tie together. So here it goes!!
We had a wonderful and blessed Christmas season here at the LeFevre home! I say season because we start around October 1 and go all the way to the end of January. I will explain how that works.
We start reading "Christmas In My Heart" stories on October 1st. These are a set of mostly little known Christmas stories compiled by Joe Wheeler. There are probably around 20 books in the series (we have about 15 of them). We have our yearly favorites and then we add new ones each year. We always write a little note on the page margin with the date we read the story and something memorable about the day such as "Charlotte got braces today" or "Grace's B-Day - played kickball at the park". It is always fun to see what we did the last time we read that story.
Another tradition we love is our special Christmas movies. Every Friday night is "Movie Night" at our home. We have been doing this for 25 years! We normally watch a wholesome family type movie but at Christmas time we watch all our Christmas favorites like "White Chritmas" with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, "Christmas In My Hometown" staring Mellisa Gilbert and "A Song For The Season" with Naomi Judd as well as many others including the 1938 version of "A Christmas Carol" on Christmas Day and "It's A Wonderful Life" on New Years Eve.
Giving is also a special part of our Christmas. We start giving gifts to each other in early December and go on until sometime in January. Many are small gifts like a sucker slipped into the back pocket or a little gift on your pillow before bed. Tamara aslo makes beauiful gift baskets for special friends or for those who are shut in or alone at Christmas. They are full of little things she buys all through the year as well as homemade cookies, Chocolate covered pretsels, glazed pecans and bread that Tamara and the kids bake during the month. The bread always has a scripture about Jesus, the bread of life written by Ken who does beautiful caligriphy.
This year we all went so the Safeway Plaza and sang carols a couple of days before Christmas during a HEAVY snowstorm. We sang and passed out tracts about the real "reason for the season" - Jesus! A couple of nights later we went to "The Beehive" a care center for the elderly, with our friends the Elliots, and sang Chistmas carols and spent some time just talking to the people. They said they were blessed but I think we were the ones who were blessed. Such sweet people and so appreciative! We are pledging to go back to visit more often during the year. Not JUST at Christmastime.
We had a beautiful candlelight communion service a our church on Christmas Eve with cold temperatures and snow on the ground! A beautiful white Christmas!
We enjoyed sleding down the hill on the mountian side behind our house on the days before and after Christmas. How blessesd we are to have this little mountain paradise to live in!
We spent New Years with our daughter, Angie and her husband Michael and our three grandchildren in Queen Creek Arizona. Only 4 hours away but what a difference down there in the Phoenix valley! From lows of near zero here to shirt sleave weather there!
There is so much more I haven't shared but I just had to share the rich blessing of God in our lives during this wonderful Christmas season. Tomorrow we will be sking with our home school group at Sunrise resort about 40 minutes from here. Everyone is excited to hit the slopes for the first time in 2010!
May God bless you richly! He is worthy of our praise! Jeff
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord! Psalms 150:6
