Our First Christmas

We had our first Christmas here in Germany! I can't believe it! I have to be honest with you, we were extremely blessed in so many ways. It was very difficult to be away from our family during this time and we missed them very much, but we were so blessed with all of the presents that both our family, friends, and support team sent us. A week or two before Christmas day, Rebecca and I were up late one night just talking about all of the memories we had growing up during the Christmas season. It was so sweet to remember all of the things that we experienced with our family and relatives during those years. Now being on the mission field, we began to talk how we need to begin to start our own traditions with our girls and that one day they would be able to talk about all of the things we did together as a family during Christmas time. As you can see, one of the things that we did do, was get a Christmas tree and lights. I (Joey) went to a couple of different of places to go look for a Christmas tree and then finally found one that I thought would be good for us. And then late that evening we let the girls stay up late and help us set up the tree. Aliyah started to get into the decorations and began to break some of them. Oh well. But it was pretty fun setting it all up together. One of the things that we wanted to make clear to our girls is why we celebrate Christmas. We wanted to let them know that it is Jesus that we celebrate. We celebrate the fact that He came and was born for us. Immanuel - God with us. So it was so great throughout the weeks when we would ask the girls about Christmas, that they would say "Jesus was born."
One of the other things that I think that we learned this year during Christmas is the value of the body of Christ and how we are truly the family of Christ. Being away from family was hard, but the Lord truly blessed us with our time that we had with some of the saints here in Herborn, with the CC Downey mission team, that we were able to have over at our house on Christmas Day, and with the Coronel families. Each of us were able to really celebrate the birth of our Lord together and encourage each other. We ate a lot of awesome food, laughed a lot, and enjoyed the sweet fellowship.
One of the other blessings was that Pastor Edmund asked if I could teach the Christmas Day service. What a blessing that was! Usually Christmas Eve service is the really big service, which this year it was again and we thought that on Christmas Day there would be just a few people. Well, there turned out to be well over 100 people that showed up. I was really shocked and a little nervous. But the Lord really blessed it.
So we had a really good Christmas! Praise the Lord!