Christmas Eve.   Melanie and I are wanting to share some Christmas spirit and take some christmas cookies that we baked to our neighbors. We set out with smiles on our faces.

We walk halfway around the neighborhood to take some to a stingy elderly man. He doesn't open the door. ok....

So we walk to a house where a widowed lady lives. She's not home.

Not wanting to give up, and still wanting to give the cookies that we worked so hard on, (as far as sticking premade dough in the oven and icing goes) we walk to the front of the neighborhood to the first house and ring the doorbell. The lights are on, yes these people are definitely home. A man opens the door, so we hold out the cookies and explain that we wanted to share some freshly baked cookies with him. He gives us a frown and says "no, i'm good". Stunned, we wish him a merry christmas and walk away.

We had started out so excited and ended up trudging home in the dark and cold with a plate of cookies still in our hands.

We ended up giving the cookies to my next-door neighbor(not Melanie, the other side).

What was learned...I guess I was kind of disappointed that we didn't get to make someone's Christmas really special. I wanted to give it to the people who won't really have an abundance of food and gifts this year. I was even looking forward for a chance to minister. But even average next-door neighbors..maybe a seed was planted. I'm praying it was.

As for Christmas being tomorrow, it doesn't really seem like christmas for me since I was away for most of the christmas season...that's where I'm wrong. I realized that how I treat christmas in my heart isn't really accurate. Christmas is more than how it feels, how pretty the lights are, how good the cookies are. Its about KNOWING and meditating and celebrating upon the fact that Christ came to earth to die for us. Without christmas there would be no easter. The little baby in the manger was the first christmas gift, sent from God to us. What more could we want? What more could we need?

Well I hope everyone has a great Christmas!

~pamella :o)

  Colombia was amazing; it was a really cool experience...sort of like a mission trip i guess. My aunt works with families who are forced out from their homes in the country by guerrilla, and they're placed in neighborhoods to live in tin shacks. They get 4 hours of water a week, and the people from the center that work there feed the kids an extra portion on Friday because they won't have anything to eat until Monday. Seeing people like that made me feel like I had too much...I feel so blessed by God to have all that I do...i don't deserve all these blessings.. We went to the school they have for the kids; they were so excited to see someone from the US and who speaks english, because they think everyone who lives here is rich (I assured them it was not so, at least I'm not) but anyways they told me to stay with them and teach them english. I decided I'm going to move there when I graduate.                         

hey,

i hope everyone's having a good week; school is pretty good, a little much at times, but good overall. high school swim season is so much fun especially with a crazy coach like ours.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding...-Proverbs 3:5

cool verse...easier said than done but im working on it.

peace.