Christmas

This year we tried to go to as many Christmas devotionals and ward or branch parties as we could to get a good variety of pictures to share. This turned out to be such a wonderful thing to do as the focus was always on Christ for us and not on the usual pressures of Christmas. The first event was a three ward combined party where they did a nativity reenactment and had some talks and then Santa came. The we went to the South Stake Christmas party at the a Steung Mean Chey building. It was so crowded as they had a huge crowd and the program and party were wonderful. The next party was at the Toul Sang Ke Ward that we have attended all the time we have been here. They did some Khmer dancing and watched a Church video that was dubbed into Khmer about the birth of Christ. It took us four months to get the translation department to dub this video but it was worth the effort as it was used in every location as part of their Christmas celebration. 

The North Stake had a devotional that was excellent. The music was beautiful and the messages were totally focused on the birth of the Savior. 

One of our assignments in connection with all the Christmas events was to help the office elders prepare posters that would be used as part of a missionary open house along with each Christmas event. We got the pictures from the Church initiative "He is the Gift" and then we wrote the text for each poster and the elders did the art work and design. We were so pleaded with how they turned out. Some were poster size and some were large standing size posters for the bigger church buildings. We also made pocket size versions for all the missionaries to use to teach from. They were beautiful. 

There were many parties we didn't make it to as they often happened at the same time. Our last party was at the Chamkarmorn Branch that we have also been attending each week. They had a party that went from 2 to 8 pm!  We could only stay for a couple of hours as we had a meeting to go to but what a great time they had. They have had a wonderful Primary president and her energy is contagious so the whole Branch had a great time. Instead of having Santa come, the Branch president, Tay Phirun handed out money to all the kids and then the kids gave candy to the audience. 

This was a very sweet Christmas season even though we missed our family!