The Wilkes Team

  The week after Thanksgiving was a blur of excitement as we directed our energies into decorating! The house began to take on the joy of Christmas which was stirring in our hearts as the week progressed. Everyone was so creative in coming up with stunning ways to make the house look extra special this year. There is nothing more enjoyable then turning Christmas music on and everyone running around putting Christmas decorations in there proper place!   

A wonderful event that we look forward to every year is the joy of gathering at Grandma and Grandpa’s house for a day of fellowship and creativity in building and decorating ginger bread houses!! We all so appreciate Grandma and Grandpa’s love for gathering their family together to make memories and traditions that will be past on and remembered for a very long time and this is one of  them. If you are not to sure about this ginger bread creation day just try fitting 15-20 people in a small kitchen with tons of candy, icing, ginger bread houses and lots of joyous people and you are sure to make a memorable time. There was not just one ginger bread house this year but FOUR and the creativity was incredible!   

Another God filled event was Christmas caroling with our dear church body this past Sunday. It was the very first time we have done this in our neighborhood since living here, and after doing it we wished we had done it more! It amazes me how often we go out to bless those around us and we end up receiving a blessing as well! Quite a few of the people we sang to told us how much they missed hearing the carolers going around and singing this time of year. We all were touched by their gratefulness and joy in hearing about Christ’s birth! Our prayer is that the messages of those songs we sang will sink into their hearts and impact them for eternity. We look forward to doing it again next year! 

   The Christmas Season can be a negative to our lives if it causes us to focus only on self. But this special set aside time can be used by God to prepare you for the upcoming year. This Christmas season has truly been a time of checking our hearts and preparing ourselves to enter this new year with purpose and a vision for discipleship. Did not Christ come to change lives? Was not his focus to go out and make disciples? May this be our passion this new year! May we be willing to set aside self and let Christ make us His devoted disciples. Discipleship requires a decision!  In order for us to be able to disciple others in the ways of righteousness we have to be willing to let Christ prune us and mold us. This calls us to humble ourselves under His mighty hand and to let Him bring our defects to the top so we might be able to work them out now in order that He may be able to use us most effectively at that due time He has already set in place. Don’t faint and become discouraged over your weakness! Let Christ help you work them through now in order to prepare you for His ministry. “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not!”(Galatians 6:9)

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 10:33 pm and is filed under Family News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.