The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

Today was our church's Children's Christmas Program. I must say, of all the churches I've ever attended THIS is the way to do a Christmas Pageant. 

Rather than trying to get a group of squirrely kids to memorize lines and perform a Christmas play our church  actually gets the Christmas program all finished by October. While the weather is still nice a few months ago we gathered all the kids together after school and took photos of them dressed up in various roles of the Christmas story. Then it gets put on a Power Point presentation and the kids get to sit next to Mom and Dad and watch themselves in the "pageant". 

I'm sharing just a few of the photos the photographer (that would be me) took. By no means am I a professional but it was sure a lot of fun! 

The innkeeper turning away Mary and Joseph. 

I just love Mary's green fingernail polish...too cute! 

The choir of angels announcing the birth to the shepherds. 

We even have a very nice sheep farmer in the area that let me hang around taking photos of his critters for our pageant. 

This year we even had a "real" Baby Jesus. Bless that mother for trusting me to thrust her little one into the hands of a bunch of 6 and 8 year olds. 

But they sure did love him. 

Our "Wise Men".

Funny side story; my maiden name is Wise and I have three brothers. One of our ministers growing up would always get a kick out of saying, "Here come the Three Wise Men" when my brothers walked in the door. I guess that makes Yip and Yap up there half a wise man :) 

Yap

Yahoo 

Yip

Our little church has had such blessings this year. We started a children's Sunday School class (which I get to teach) in the spring and the first Sunday we only had 3 children. This morning we had 12 get up to sing and share poems in front of the church. What a blessing it's been to work with all these kids. It keeps me busier, along with a few more obligations I've added this year, and I have had as much time to blog as I'd like but that's okay. I get to see all those smiling faces on Sunday mornings! 

One gentleman at our church gave me the best compliment though. He said, "Next week I'll turn 85 years old and I've attended this church since I was 15 years old. I have never seen as many kids in the church as I did today." What a wonderful blessing! It's statements like that which give me hope for the future generations.