Tis the Season

The season of Christmas preperation and celebration continues. The Christmas program rehearsals were all extremely successful. The actual performance is this upcoming Saturday and they all seem extremely excited to take part in it. At the last practice, we had a full dress rehearsal. It was so much fun to see all the kids dressed up. This is the first time for a lot of the kids to have the opportunity to get dressed up in costumes for a Christmas program, so they were pretty pumped for that. Plus, they all just looked so cute.

Our Mary and Joseph. Notice the white baby Jesus. haha.

 

One of the kids needed to leave halfway through the practice, so I was asked to fill in. I thought I did a pretty decent job as a star.

It has been so much fun getting to work with these kids and get to know them. Despite their incredible amounts of energy and lack of ability to focus sometimes, they are so sweet. A lot of them just need some added attention and we definitely have that to give them. I'm excited to see where these kids go, even in the next few months while I am here. God is working in these kids already even if we don't always see it.

This past weekend we also had the opportunity to attend the grand opening and commissioning of the Amadora Church. They just moved into a new building a few months ago after a long struggle in their previous location. Not all of the congregation was able to attend church on the same week, so they had to alternate weeks between people. Due to the economic instability here in Portugal right now, a lot of families also moved away in order to get better jobs so church attendance dropped.

So, for us to take part in this very joyous 3 hour African celebration was an honor and a pleasure.



Pastor Mente

 

The feeling going on in that church was amazing that night. The joy, the genuine happiness, the dancing, the music and the food were all incredible.