As Christmas made its appearance last Sunday in Promiseland, we experienced the excitement as the kids stepped into the Promiseland hallway. Giant candy canes and twinkling lights greeted them. We also brought out the hand bells for the kids to play to Silent Night. They were remarkably good as we worshiped and praised God through music.

We would like to invite you and your families to our Children’s Christmas Celebration on Sunday, December 16 at 4:30. It will look a little different this year, but will still be a fun time for the whole family as we watch some of your children on video telling the Christmas story. We will sing songs, have some fun activities for everyone, and share a meal and birthday cake for Jesus. We hope you will all join us.

Greetings from the busy hall of Promiseland. I thought since our calendar year is quickly coming to an end it would be fun to share with you, some important spiritual growth moments we have experienced in PL in 2012.

• We had four kids give their lives to Christ.
• Around 40 kids memorized the Lord’s Prayer.
• We filled 5 shoe boxes from their Promisemart purchases to send to needy kids for Christmas.
• Supported Bekula, our Ethiopia child, for another year through weekly offerings.
• And gave $250 to House of Hope, an orphanage in China, from weekly offerings.

We understand none of these things can happen without the support and participation of you as parents, so we thank you and pray God continues to bless your families as you grow in His likeness.

I love Fall, it reminds me why I still live in Indiana. No, we don’t have beautiful mountains to gaze upon or oceans beaches to walk on, but we do have four seasons in which God does some mighty handiwork. We are given beautiful pictures of His majesty as we enter into each season. Pretty amazing when you think about it. I hope I will always be in awe of his glorious creation.

Wow! It seems like it has been forever since I’ve written a Chatter. It was a nice break this summer because of the scaled down version of Promiseland but we are back to two hours of teaching again and ready for the school year ahead.

This Sunday we have some special activities happening at both services. Your PL age kids will be upstairs at the beginning of the service for worship. We will sing some of the Vacation Bible School songs they learned this summer and we will be presenting Bibles to some of the kids. It should be a great time of worship for all of us.

We are winding down from another school year and I am looking forward to summer and all that comes with it. This is the last month of our normal Promiseland teaching times before we move to our summer schedule of only one teaching time at the 10:45 service. This will include our 2yr. class through 5th grade and our Guardian Angels. Hopefully all of the volunteers will enjoy their lightened teaching schedules and be refreshed for the fall.

The last shopping day at the Promisemart Store will be May 20 and after that it will close for the summer. We are going to challenge the kids to learn the Lord’s Prayer during the summer months since they won’t have any Bible verses to memorize in their classes. I will give you more information on this in next month’s Chatter.