Tonight is the last English immersion class of the year, and we’re going to be learning some Christmas vocabulary. I zipped over to Tagxedo and made some word clouds to share with them (and you).
First is a word cloud that comes from the commonly read Scriptures about Jesus’ birth, as well as five of the most popular Christmas carols. The second word cloud comes from other common Christmas songs (maybe you can guess which ones they were!) and “‘Twas The Night Before Christmas”.
Personally, I think the first cloud offers a lot more hope than the second!
I chose 15 words from each word cloud, and we’ll be doing some games with them tonight. 🙂
We would appreciate your prayers this week as we wrap up our classes and have our closing program on Thursday. We haven’t been getting a lot of sleep at our house for various reasons this week, so we’re just trying to keep going!
The season of – extra activities – has certainly arrived! We would certainly appreciate your prayers for a very busy day tomorrow, and a busy week to follow.
Tomorrow morning I’ll be teaching adult Sunday school again – we’re at the 8th Commandment, “You shall not steal.” As usual we’ll have far more to talk about that we’ll have time for, but that’s what makes it interesting. 🙂
Then we have our last “Adoration Service” of the year. We’ll be talking about the first and second coming of Christ. I’m going to try to do something a little extra. It’s – well, I won’t say. But let’s just say I’ve been learning quite a bit about sheep this week.
Now Shari and I agreed to sing in a choir for an evangelistic concert (two performances, actually) in a park in Mexico City next Sunday afternoon. This morning I discovered – suprise! – we’re going to have another concert tomorrow too!
So we’ve been frantically trying to get the songs figured out. Tomorrow afternoon is a special dinner for leaders of various churches in Mexico City. We were planning to go anyway, but not we’ll be running out right after our morning service for a practice.
So tomorrow in particular is going to be pretty busy!
This coming week we also have our final community centre classes. On Thursday after the baking class we’ll have a special closing program for all our students, with some fun and some ponche.
Nathanael also has some practices for a Christmas program, but his program isn’t until the 20th. Needless to say, there’s lots more coming up this month!
In December 2005 we enjoyed our last Christmas in Canada before moving to Mexico. Here, 10 years ago today, Nathanael, Shari and Hannah enjoy the (mostly) decorated tree in our apartment in Calgary.
In case you missed something, here are the ten most popular posts from Finding direction for the last 90 days. I’m cheating a little bit this time – the “history week” posts were among the most popular, so I’ll simply include the index of those posts on the list, rather than including the most popular on that list. So I guess technically we have 17 popular posts this time. 🙂
The posts are in chronological order, the three most popular in bold.
Just stopping by for a quick report on the weekend.
On Saturday night the church in Jesús MarÃa hosted a dinner for couples. Our temporary sanctuary was all decked out with hearts – balloons and those little corrugated decorations. We all brought food to share – chicken cordon bleu and spaghetti, for the most part.
But before eating we had some prize give-aways and chances for certain couples to publicly express their undying love (to each other, of course – but in public).
Erik Morga shares at the Couple’s DinnerThen Pastor Erik, who comes from another church in Mexico City, shared for just over an hour on the topic of biblical marriage. He was clear, frank, and practical. He boldly hit upon some issues that were difficult and hit very close to home, and he didn’t shy away from the tough stuff.
I had the video camera on for the presentation, so I’m trying to get it copied right now for some people who missed it or want to hear it again.
Finally, I think it was around 10pm, we dug into the food.
On Sunday morning I taught my Sunday school class on the sixth commandment – You shall not murder.
I knew this would be one of the most challenging of the Ten Commandments to teach – challenging because, as I said at the beginning of the class, most people still feel that murder is wrong. And so when you really start to delve into what it means, it shows the darkness of our own hearts in a way that we’d probably rather not see.
Just think about all the things that are wrapped up in this commandment. What about these issues:
Death through negligence
Abortion
Suicide
Euthanasia
The death penalty
Hate and resentfulness
Good Samaritans
Revenge
Looking out for the poor
Vigilantes
That’s only a start – and we had less than an hour to talk!
I knew I had to end with a discussion of forgiveness and how we receive it, especially after the Bible declared pretty much everyone (if not 100% of everyone) in the room guilty. And I knew it would be an issue – but it was even more of an issue than I thought it would be – the question Can suicide be forgiven?
This question is actually a lot more important than it may first appear. It touches on questions like – Can you be forgiven after death? What is the nature and purpose of confession? What is salvation? How and when are we forgiven?
The heated discussion continued after the class, and it will continue some more – at the very least, I’ll clarify a few things in the next class (lot of time – next week is the easy topic of “adultery” – hah!).
In the service, Rod brought John 19 alive for us in his sermon. And – it was Fabian’s last Sunday with us! Fabian has been leading the music lately, but he’s going to go and get himself married on Saturday, and move away, and leave us. 🙁
Anyway – a full weekend. With another full weekend to come!
Now Shari and I agreed to sing in a choir for an evangelistic concert (two performances, actually) in a park in Mexico City next Sunday afternoon. This morning I discovered – suprise! – we’re going to have another concert tomorrow too!
