A fantastic day!

Today turned out to be a busy day! A lot more busy then I had anticipated...but it was jammed packed with good times, so I'm feeling fantastic!

I originally was supposed to be at my church for the whole afternoon helping out with the Sunday school Christmas play. But I was relieved of that duty, much to my excitement, and decided then to head down to the service at 614 in regent park before the program at my church started.

As soon as I walked into the door I was just blasted with blessings, it was wonderful. I couldn't stop smiling from the moment I got there until long after I left. The first blessing was getting to see my girl Tammy, a graduate from the Ignite team from last year, who was up from the U.S visiting for the week. I had no idea that she was going to be there, so seeing her absolutely made my day! It was really really exciting to hear about everything that she's involved with back home. In January she gets to be apart of running a new program that is similar to Ignite, in Georgia. She is so pumped about it, and it is so awesome to see programs like this popping up in more places throughout the Salvation Army!

Shortly after that I ran into my little buddy Nicolas, who is about 2 years old, and I had met Thanksgiving weekend. He is one of the cutest kids that I've ever seen and just gets attached to me whenever I go, so I got to hang out with this little guy all night...which also just brightened up my day.

And then the final blessing, which was the highlight of my weekend, was finding out the 614 kids were doing their Christmas pageant! I absolutely just love the kids in regent park, so getting to see a program they were putting on was just fantastic! It was fairly simple, but filled with such an incredible amount of heart! All of these kids are just so real, so when they do something like this you know it's genuine and straight from their hearts. I loved seeing the guys who were playing the wise men do their part. When the lyrics of the song said "and kings will take off their crowns.." they all took off their paper crowns that they were wearing and knelt down and laid it on the ground in front of them. It was so simple, but so incredible to see. It was evident that these kids knew exactly what Christmas is about and were just surrendering it back to Jesus. Then for the concluding number, all the angels, shepherds and wise men joined together to sing along and dance to "Joyful Joyful" (the version from Sister Act 2) complete with one of the older guys rapping along to the rap that pops up in the middle of the song.

It was just a fantastic night. Something about 614 just fills me with the Holy Spirit, each and every time I go, and tonight was no different. Getting a chance to see about 20 kids tell the Christmas story, and genuinely demonstrate the real reason for this holiday season, absolutely made my Christmas.

December has just flown by (only 5 days left to Christmas...what the?!) and earlier today I was just trying to put myself into the holiday spirit by reminding myself how quickly it's coming, despite my ability to accept it. But tonight is what did it for me. I'm ready for Christmas to come now. I guess sometimes it helps to be able to see Jesus through the eyes of a child.

Blessings this Christmas season!!