'Twas the Sunday before Christmas...

Here the children from Grades 1-3 are practicing before their performances at the church today.

We had a special service and a celebration afterwards. One of the members had friends visiting who were from Hong Kong, presently living in Switzerland, and had them sit next to me in what I like to call the "Japanese Language Impaired Section" of the church. Right at the back where sometimes someone is available to give English or sometimes German or Chinese interpretation of the Prayers and the pastor's sermon. Gareth did an admirable job of interpreting into English today.

After the service we went downstairs to the fellowship hall and had a lunch together and were entertained by two different groups of children. Then each person was given a wrapped present. They were of all different shapes and sizes. We were then given elaborate instructions to pass them, in an orderly fashion ,while singing "Silent Night" in Japanese, to the person on our left, passing a gift at the end of each line with our left hand and accepting another gift from the person on our right with our right hand. At the conclusion of the song we were allowed to open the gift in our right hand.

After the presents each person who had a birthday this month, or who had been baptized in December was asked to come to the front. I think there were close to twenty people who each stated their name and birth/baptismal date. We then sang "Happy Birthday" to that person.

We sang some carols together and as had been announced at the beginning of the program we were dismissed with prayer at 2:00 pm.