Well…it has been a while since we last updated our blog. Life has been pretty busy with both the adult and children’s cantatas and Christmas Eve Candlelight service and everything else that goes along with the wonderful time of the year, Christmas. Sorry for the delay, but here is our latest update.
To catch you up since the last post, I guess we should begin with our Live Nativity. This year we were able to present our live nativity in downtown Woodsfield in conjunction with their Christmas Festival. We also had a float in their Christmas Parade that evening. It was a great outreach opportunity as well as a privilege for our church folks to serve and minister. We followed this activity with two more weekends of our annual live nativity in the usual spot just off the highway. We had several stop in the check things out and get some homemade cookies and cocoa at the “Inn”. This all led up to the weekend of December 19th, which was the weekend for both our Children’s and Adult Christmas Cantatas. What a great job everyone did as the services went very well and we had record numbers in attendance for 2 out of the 3 services that Sunday. We wrapped up the month of December’s special services celebrating the birth of our Savior by having a Christmas Eve Candlelight service which was attended by 55+ from our Church, their families and community. Whew…what a wonderfully busy month in the ministry here at Calais.
New Years Eve was rather quiet as we just hung out around the house and rang the new year in by sleeping soundly in our bed :). Just couldn’t stay up as late this year.
Our First Sunday of 2011 at Calais was spent, after the previous week’s reflecting, reviewing and refocusing, challenging the congregation with God’s message for the future of Calais Independent Baptist Church and specifically what I felt God leading us to do for 2011. I’m sure that we were not unlike many of your churches in doing so. Please pray for us, as we do for you, in our prayerful efforts to challenge each other to do more this year for God and the church than we ever have before.
As I am writing this post, we have many exciting things to look forward to, event his month! My, Brandon’s, parents are coming up in another week and will spend an entire week here with us (which we are very excited about), I will be starting weekly Discipleship classes at the church on January 15th, Kim began our weekly Children’s ministry on Sunday nights last Sunday, I have premarital counseling sessions to get underway for a young couple in the church, and my in-laws, Kim’s parents, are talking about coming up sometime for a visit. What an exciting time to be in the ministry and for us personally, to be in the will of God!
Hopefully won’t be as long before the next post, and it will be a shorter one (no promises though).
Have a great week/month as you strive to serve Christ faithfully in whatever capacity, and location He has called you.
Pastor Brandon and Kim Ward
