It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

We have a pretty nice dusting of snow everywhere which, has stayed put or turned to stay put ice because it's so cold outside. There's also a fairly decent array of Christmas lights up, not only in town but also in people's apartments. I sprung for a new item this year - an electric star for our window which faces the road. Pretty pricey at $4, but it's holding up well so I'm not complaining!

Our donation warehouse here at the foundation is finally filled with the shoeboxes from Scotland. They were supposed to arrive a couple of weeks ago but just arrived yesterday. The shoeboxes are filled with toys, clothing and candy for various ages. Sorting through them for all of our kids here at FCE, as well as for our poor families, always brings a lot of "Christmas" to our team!

Secret Santa has also started...us "foreigners" : ) pull names for each other and have to leave 3 items secretly for them over this week. Then, on Christmas Eve, when we have our Christmas Dinner together - we will give a nice gift to that person. They have to guess first who has been their Santa, and that's the fun part! It's been pretty sneaky this year so far - let me tell you. One of the guys on our team had to follow a piece of string around our team's house that started in the entryway, and went to our shoe rack - hooks for the coats - a big safe in the next room - then into the tv room - then back into our eating room to the medicine cabinet on the wall. It ended somewhere around our supply of toilet paper and had a carton of Swedish "Glogg" waiting for him. Pretty good, eh?

I was thinking today how nice it would be to live in a small house with a small yard. Or, maybe even to have that small house have an extra room in it! But then, I started realizing that living in a house means hardly any contact with neighbors...living in this apartment I have verbal conversation with at least 3 or 4 neighbors every single day. More opportunities for me to get to know them, more opportunities for them to ask me what I'm doing...and, then, I always have the chance to talk about Jesus! So, for now at least, apartment it is.

The Christmas play that I'm trying to pull together is just that - pulling, pulling, pulling. : ) Ha! Pray, please, that somehow this will actually come together into something! What an incredible way for the entire foundation to work on something together - to focus on something together ...never has something like this been attempted so I think it could have a pretty big impact on how we see ourselves as the Body of Christ, and how we are working together because of Christ's birth.