Favorite Holiday Songs

Mildly to the frustration of my roommate, I love non-traditional Christmas music. Don't get me wrong, I think carols and songs by Bing Crosby are fantastic. But after three winters working retail, I got sick of hearing the same songs over and over again! But thanks to Noisetrade, I can get new music for free every Christmas. Here are some of my favorites from this year to enjoy during advent!

Christmas tree

In case you haven't noticed, I've been trying to do a photo-a-day thing. My friend April posted about it, and I thought I'd join her in it, because consistency is something I struggle with. At the same time, I enjoy the challenge of creatively capturing moments and sharing about each day. We'll see if I make it through the entire month! I'm surprised I've managed to make it this far.

I love our tree-it's slightly chaotic, but ended up looking beautiful anyways!

I'm beginning to feel a little concerned about getting everything done for Christmas. There are things that need to happen in January, books that I need to read and planning that I need to do that I know I'm not going to want to do over the holidays. We'll see how it goes tomorrow. Perhaps I'll get enough done to feel ready!

Family

My mom had surgery on her throat yesterday. They removed her thyroid, one parathyroid, and a large lump that didn't belong there. As I was talking to her today, I realized how much I miss my family at the moment, and how much I love them. It can be hard being away from family, especially during the holidays. This is my third Christmas away from home, and each one isn't nearly as hard as the one before.

And even though I'm missing my family back in Washington, I've got a fantastic family here. There's cuddles and laughter, dancing and debates, disagreements and reconciliation. It's a beautiful way to live, and I love sharing life with these wonderful people!

(Not everyone is in the photos.)

A beautiful sight

We woke up this morning to frost and cloudy skies- the type of cloudy skies that look like cold grey iron and make you think of snow. But there wasn't snow, only frost.

In the morning, we had a bit of a Welsh lesson, and learned how to greet each other and talk about the weather. (An essential for living in Wales, or Britian for that matter!) Unsurprisingly, the weather vocabulary had words for cold, raining, snowy, wet, foggy and cloudy; hot and warm weren't to be seen on the list!

This evening is my church homegroup. I greatly enjoy meeting with the people there every week, as they've become friends over time. I especially appreciated tonight, which was our last night before the holidays. It was encouraging to hear Polish, German, Chinese and English being spoken as we prayed for each other!

Green

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I picked the best green things I could find-cozy flannel sheets (I was so happy when I remembered that I had these!) and my green blanket, which I got as a 21 birthday present, I think. Oh, and the patterned stuff is Shelby's trousers.

I made matzoh bread for communion this morning. It was great to reflect on peace, Jesus and all the peace his coming is supposed to bring.

Also, we decorated our tree today, hence the antlers!!

Wrapping paper and advent

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This year, I went the "I'm too lazy to go to the store and buy wrapping paper" route and made my own. I found some newspaper laying around, pulled out my acrylic paints and got started. I happened to find some silver acrylic paint laying around the house, so I used that too. Voila! Fun, silver, purple and goldenrod wrapping paper!

Earlier today, I went with some friends (who are all about the same age as my uncles) to Colwyn Bay to visit an art space/gallery thing centered around advent. It was fascinating to see how people interacted with the biblical narrative from a variety of backgrounds, ranging from non-spiritual to "I follow Jesus". One of my favorites was an archeolgical re-creation of tablets that Zechariah might have written during his time of silence. There were actually several artists who were inspired Zechariah's silence. I wonder what that means.

The reason the four of us went to see the exhibition was that we are all interested in seeing the church interact more with the arts here in Wrexham. I look forward to seeing what will come of this adventure in the coming months and years!

Something I'm reading

The book is called Culture of Honor, and it's all about loving people well, especially within the church. It's challenging and thought provoking. What would the church look like if we really lead and loved people the way God meant us to lead and love them? We're reading the book as a staff team and trying to work through some of these questions for ourselves.

That said, I haven't read the book in awhile, in want to finish it before Christmas! I've been occupying my time with other things however; like wrapping presents and writing support letters and spending time with people. How can I fit everything I want to do in 24 hours?! Who knows!

Ornaments and a tree

Our Christmas tree arrived today! Every year, we buy our tree from a scout troop, and they kindly deliver it to us. At least I think it's a scout troop. I don't buy the tree!

We practiced carols this morning for the coming weeks. Everyone seemed to be feeling happy and energetic (in other words, hyper) after singing and dancing around for an hour or so.

Today also contained a bit of shopping for presents, as well as watching Brave and Evan Almighty. It's a good thing just to spend time with people!

Bright

Even though I've lived all my life fairly far north, it never ceases to amaze me that the sun stay so low in the winter. Today, it barely made it above the rooftops across the street! And the sun isn't even that bright! But I'm still very glad of the sunlight we do have. Life would be miserable without it.

We went to a ministry tonight that I personally find very challenging. It's a youth club/drop in center sort of thing for teenagers to come hangout of Friday night. I just started volunteering there in October, and each week I struggle to want to go. I find it difficult to connect to teenagers in general, and I don't thrive in unstructured environments.

I'd love to say that God magically transforms my heart each time I go, and that I have amazing, life-changing conversations with the teens there. But I'm afraid it's an agonizingly slow process of building relationships and earning trust over long periods of time, perhaps years.

Oh Lord, would you turn me into a bright light without having to hollow me out first? That'd be less painful! I don't really mean that though. I know what you're asking me to do is worth it...

Shopping

We've got a community Christmas party coming up soon, so I've been on the lookout for nice shoes and a nice dress. Perhaps because I've been looking at charity shops, I haven't found anything that really appeals to me yet. It doesn't help that shopping isn't my favorite thing in the world!

I also think there's a huge difference between American and British fashion. From what I remember of American clothes, they were somewhat boring and straightforward in the style/sewing, and had a decent range of color. What I'm seeing here is boring colors and creative (sometimes too frouffy) style/sewing.

I wish I could combine the two somehow, and have creative, colorful, but not too frouffy clothing. If it would be inexpensive with interesting, quality materials, that would be perfect. I think I may need to just buy myself a sewing machine instead!

Joyful

Every morning, we as a staff talk to God about the day and about the things going on within our team. And this morning, we ended up asking God to make today a joyful day.

Thankfully, today is Shelby's *real* 21st birthday. So we celebrated her twice today. Once quietly with ourselves (we have a habit of asking for highlights of the past year, hopes for the coming year and then everyone saying nice things about the birthday person) and again tonight at our community potluck.

Every Tuesday of a lecture week, we open our home up for a bring and share, as they call it here. There's great food, and talking to friends and strangers from the local churches, a couple songs and a short talk. It's a great way to meet new people and make friends that I wouldn't normally come across!

Another joyful thing is that our speaker for the rest of the week arrived today. Her name is Taryn, and she'll be talking about destiny. I'm particularly happy that she's here, because I've known her for nearly four years now (we met in Albania, or was it Greece?) and she's become a good friend. The greatest thing about having friends all over the place is meeting them again and again!

Red

I often mis-button this coat, which makes me feel like a child again. It was always so complicated making sure that everything lined up! I bought this coat last year at a charity shop last year, and it's been one of my favorite, okay, my only winter coat ever since. And I love wearing my Welsh flag pin on it! And I've got the coziest, softest scarf to wear with it too. Conveniently, the scarf doubles as a shawl when I'm cold in church because it's so large!

We were supposed to have lecture about God's father-heart, but our speaker's son was vomiting, so we pushed back lectures to late afternoon/evening. Instead, we went to help at the Salvation Army. They had 1500 kg of food donated over the weekend, so we helped sort everything, and also helped prepare Christmas parcels for families.

So, my day has been full! Christmas parcels, talking about God as father, and lastly, putting lasagna together for dinner! Yum.

It's a wonderful life

There are many traditions that I enjoy around Christmas time: carols, family, card games, Christmas lights...but one thing I've started doing recently is making paper snowflakes every year. I started three years ago when I was nannying, and kept doing it because they're so much fun to make!

So, I'm relaxing this Sunday afternoon and cutting snowflakes. We celebrated Shelby's 21st birthday after church already (Happy Birthday Shelby!), and perhaps we'll watch a movie tonight. Too bad we don't have It's A Wonderful Life- it's my favorite Christmas movie.

My view of the day

Well, I'm going to try this and see how it goes: one photo taken and one short post for the month of December. Given my past experience of myself, I haven't got high hopes for my diligence, but we'll see!

Today's photo: sneaking stealthy snaps of Skyping. (With April, Chloe and Adeline!)

Also, I prayed for people in Wrexham with healing on the streets this morning, skyped with Saulo, then April, and watched a movie (Get Smart) with the crew tonight.

And it was good.