Sharing Emmanuel, God With Us
With Pastor Jerry afterwards - being a man, he was not allowed into the event. 😉
The Barbie-themed table the high school girls did, complete with Barbie herself
Yesterday, I got to do a Christmas brunch at a church in Mason, OH, and I was so excited about it because it is their largest outreach of the year for women’s ministries, and I just loved hearing the excitement these women had over what God would do with the time. In fact, I have a couple more of these events coming up this month, and knowing the prayer, thought, and time that all these women’s teams have put into these events just blows me away!
Anyway, Mason is a suburb just north of Cincinnati, and as we got off the freeway, I realized the area looked very familiar. It was a pretty strange way to get to a church – the GPS routed me right through a neighborhood, and some other strange turns, and I thought, “I know I’ve been here before!” but I also knew I hadn’t done an event for this particular church, so it stumped me a bit. Then, when we pulled into the parking lot, I KNEW I’d been there, but I still couldn’t place it, and then it hit me. This church supports one of the missionaries we stayed with in Kenya, and when they were home on furlough last year, they adopted their third child, a little boy. This church let them park their RV in the parking lot and live on their property for a while, and when I came down to meet their new addition, I did it right in the parking lot of this church! How crazy is that! I found out when I got in that this church has an incredible heart for Kenya – they have four families raising support right now to move there full time.
After that, I knew we would be friends. 🙂 And how fun – one of the videos I show has the very missionaries they support in it, and some of the people in the audience had been to the feeding centers in the video!
We had an awesome time that morning. They have women who host the tables and there’s a competition for different kinds of decorating, so the creativity was awesome. One of my favorites was a cowgirl theme and the hostess even had a tin washtub of root beer next to the table. All the women got lassos for their favor – not your typical. 🙂
I presented “Emmanuel, God With Us” and heard from many women how timely that was to hear. People need to know that God is with them, that He is our joy at Christmas, and that He also comforts because Christmas is a hard season for many. We laughed, we cried, it was all my favorite things about women’s ministry. Had a great time, Grace Baptist – I hope I see you again soon!