Merry Christmas!! and Happy Birthday Sol!!!
Our students took Christmas to 50 orphan kids, and two days later Sol got 20 of her closest friends together to celebrate her first "spiritual" birthday if I can call it that. AKA her baptism.
Games, food, presents, and Jesus make for a great night no matter who you are with, but when its for poeple who would not have experienced any of that during the holidays, it makes it so much better.
This year was harder than last year. There were more kids which meant more of everything had to happen to pull it off. Last year our students were great about taking the kids letters, getting presents and bringing them on time. This year lets say we had a 85% success rate. All the letters got taken by students but not all the presents got brought. Sooo, what did we do? After being upset with peoples irresponsibility for about 30 seconds, I got some students together and we went shopping for the presents that were lacking. It was fun and tiring, and in the end the smiles on the kids faces showing off their new stuff made it all worth it.
Another highlight from this year was being able to completely pass off the actual party we had with the kids to our students. It was great to see our students step up, take charge, play with the kids, and for all the staff to get to sit back and watch our students be leaders.
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| Andrea leading everyone in song and dance |
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| big and small enjoying it all |
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| passing out stockings some of our students made |
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| presents |
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| they loved them |
Happy Birthday Sol!!!
If you haven't checked out the last blog, check it out because I wrote about Sol and her decision to get baptized. So we had it planned for 7pm on Sunday night. I was at my house with Kami and Hector watching the Falcons game all afternoon, so we hadn't had time to get a cake for after the baptism. Well it was getting kinda late 6:30, 6:40...but the game was so close we didn't want to leave. Good thing for us we live in Mexico and being on time is not really a priority...we decided after the game Kami would go for the cake, me and Hector would go to the campus house and stall if need be till Kami made it back. Well, Kami made it back with the cake before half the other people arrived so no worries there...the baptism would go on as planned.
So Nate gave some words on baptism and Sol, then I said some stuff about Sol (actually made her cry...u know in a good way) then some scripture, a prayer and her confession of faith before the actual baptism. Some of the sweetest words I have heard all semester was when Sol said "I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God."
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| Saying some words about Sol |
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| Prayer by Lulis who was baptized in October |
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| Sol's confession of faith |
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| Right here I actually forgot what I say before dunking her...we had a good laugh |
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| I remembered after some help from team members haha |
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| I got the first hug |
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| Then there were hugs for everyone |
So another thing I thought was really cool was the fact that there were both professing believers and professing atheist there at the baptism to support Sol. Knowing them all and their stories makes me smile and love what I do. Knowing that Sol was where they are spiritually speaking less than a year ago gives me hope and encourages me to keep on praying and keep on loving and keep on chasing after God every day.
Jesus makes life worth living. I will be in the Atlanta area Dec. 12-28 if you want to get together just send me an email and we will make it happen. Love you all. Merry Christmas!!
