Christmas carols and cookies

This was the week that we set aside to spread a little holiday cheer with our students. Sunday night we took our senior high students out to sing Christmas carols and deliver 40 dozen cookies to a neighborhood we wanted to bless. The temperature was about 25 degrees, but the windchill made it feel like about 4 stinkin' degrees. Tonight (Wednesday night) was a little warmer, something like 34 degrees with no wind. We've been doing this for about 5 years now, and every year is great.

The singing is fun, and we get to bless some of the families in our community with cookies, Christmas cheer, and a few gift cards to WalMart.

I believe that one of the main benefits of things like this is that we're laying a foundation for our students, helping them learn that it's important for us to give back to our community, to invest ourselves in the people who live around us. That's why we bagged our summer camp in favor of a stay-in-home week of service projects and acts of kindness.

Jesus was known as a man who went around doing good (and healing all who were oppressed by the devil). We want to be the kind of people who are known for doing good things, too.