Saturday, November 17, 2007

Don't lose sight...

The year is (maybe not so gradually) drawing to a close. What, you might say, it’s only the middle of November! Well, school’s due to finish in 3 weeks’ time for the year and most of the school kids finish their exams at the end of next week. After that they basically hang around at school for 2 weeks, so many of them go on holidays ‘early’. (Besides which, the schools have a habit of closing a few days earlier than the official end date…)

And once it’s school holidays, Windhoek could almost close down. Families go away on holidays either to their farms, or to the coast, or down to South Africa (which evens things up a bit with all the South Africans coming up here!). Some businesses close for three or four weeks; but most (except for banks, supermarkets, etc) for at least two weeks over the Christmas-New Year period.

So our last day of After School Program will be the 22nd, next week Thursday. We’re going to have a bit of a party for the kids. In craft they’re working on some Bible verse hangings, so hopefully they’ll finish those on Monday and will be able to take them back home to remind them of some of the lessons they’ve learned in Bible Club this term.

We had a Christmas-themed Bible Club this week, with the main message being not to lose sight of Jesus at Christmas. The kids participated enthusiastically as usual (see the pictures of singing time!). And, yes, that’s Kauna showing the kids how to do the actions properly!

On the home front: remembering
Jimmy and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary on Wednesday and were able to go out for a lovely meal while our good friend Vasisee babysat.

And tomorrow is the Sunday School’s Christmas program at church (it’s Saturday afternoon as I type this and the kids are at the church, practising hard for it). Then on Thursday Samara has her Pre-school Christmas concert. So we’ve got no excuse for not remembering that Christmas is just around the corner (how many days and counting?).

But let’s take the message of the Bible Club with us and not lose sight of Jesus in all the shopping and parties and concerts and ‘whatever-all-else’ (as a friend of mine would say) that this time of the year is filled with. Let’s each find something special to do this Christmas that reminds us of the real reason we’re celebrating – the birth of God’s son so that we could be reconciled to Him.

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