Let me introduce myself...

Contrary to popular belief, I have not fallen off the face of the planet. I don't think I've ever gone this long between posts and I apologize for the delay. That being said, I have an excuse for my tardiness.

Here's the thing...the holidays here are simply too close together. I grew up up in Canada, eh, so I'm used to a different schedule. At home we have a reasonable break between Thanksgiving and Christmas (mid-Oct to late Dec.) That gives everybody time to regroup, to recover from the quantity time with family and to work in a crash diet between inexcusable eating binges. But here, everything is back to back. There's still a leftover drumstick in the fridge and y'all are cooking up another whole bird. Granted, maybe it's because I ate Cooking For Christ's turkey dinner for 4 days straight that I'm over-loaded on dressing and gravy, but I still think the big days are a little too close. Since it's unlikely that the nation will change the official holiday schedule just to suit me, I'll move on.

Yesterday we had our big Christmas outreach at our Dream Center on Winbourne Ave. Talk about slammin!!! With about 250 volunteers and probably 700 people from the community, we had that place packed out. Just to show you how good God is, on Tuesday of this week we were praying that people would come...more than the 70 people we had registered at that point. Well, they came and came and came. We had hot dogs, fake snow, karaoke caroling and cookie decorating. Once the kids finished eating, playing games and jumping around the bounce houses we invited everyone in for a Christmas service. Kari Smith delivered the word, Ang Musso rocked the place, it was amazing. Kids made decisions for Christ and everybody had an awesome time. Hats off to Kari and her team for pulling it all off.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our incredible team of elves (aka HPC volunteers) sorted, pulled and packed over a thousand toys to give to the families who came. How cool is it that very child between the ages of 2-12 left with a toy? Mark and Kayla were running the workshop and were absolutely fearless in getting the job done. Their willing spirit humbles me. Kudos to them and their team for making the seemingly impossible, possible.

I don't know how to say this without it sounding like a Grammy speech, but there are just so many people who laid it all down to make this happen: Jeannie, Barbara, Mr. Pat, the interns, Dean, Summer, Frankie; your servant's heart is a testament to God's grace. It is such a privilege to serve with every one of you. Everybody who gave, showed up, painted a face, prayed, held a child...you made it happen.

I love my church. I love that our pastors have a heart for the poor. I love that giving and serving are priorities in our congregation. I love that two weeks before Christmas hundreds of people gave up their Saturday to make a difference in somebody's life. Lives were changed on Saturday, including mine. Thank you, for making it all happen. All glory to God!