Becky and I went away for our anniversary this weekend up to Napa Valley for 2 days. It was quite fun. We did miss the kick-off our our Advent Conspiracy series which will take us into Christmas. What is great about Advent Conspiracy is that it takes the holiday and turn it into others focused which is the true meaning of Christmas with what Jesus did and lived out.
This year we are encouraging involvement in Angel Tree, which is an organization which arranges gifts to be bought for children of parents who are in jail. It was encouraging to hear that after the first Sunday all the children our church was sponsoring got covered by people in the church. We also are encouraging signing up for being part of Elm Street Mission in downtown Santa Cruz in helping out with the needy there. And we are encouraging people to help out with the building of a water system for a village in Uganda. Our church had a team who went to Uganda earlier this year and water is such a tremendous need.
So those are our three primary Christmas focuses this year. Advent Conspiracy is really an amazing thing that my friend Rick McKinley and a few others dreamed of a few years ago. It has really taken off and I think over 1,000 churches are now part of it. I emailed Rick today letting him know I am using one of his outlines for the sermon this weekend and he told me to make sure I don't use his wife's name in the illustrations. So I shall try not to. But the web site has great resources for churches to use. If you aren't part of it this year, I would really encourage you next Christmas to consider doing this.
Christmas is coming upon us and I cannot believe it is Christmas already. Our church is putting on a very unusual play this year for Christmas. It is not a typical Christmas play. I will write about it after it happens, but I look forward to seeing it next week and you can see the promo for it here.
When Becky and I were driving back and heading from San Jose to Santa Cruz we counted 34 cars/trucks that had trees tied to the roofs. What a strange and confusing sight that would be if you didn't know what was happening. Cars with trees on the roofs all driving by.
