Thursday Thankfulness-"Jesus The Light of the World"

 Good Thursday Morning! This will have to be quick because I have my six week post-surgery checkup with the surgeon this morning at 10:00 a.m., and it is an hour's drive...so don't let me ramble on too long here!  I may have to finish this later, but at least I'll get started!  

First off, I need to "promote" Lily Grace's latest "ADVENT-ure" over in the "little town of Bethlehem". She wanted to tell you that she loves it when you folks come over and visit her at her place, and she promises you will enjoy this little Advent journey with her.

That being said, let me move on to my own ADVENT-ures.  Yesterday was our church ladies' UMW Christmas luncheon, also known as a "Birthday Party for Jesus".  We always have a special cake made for the occasion, and we gather around and sing Happy Birthday to Jesus.  Here is the cake:

The beautiful star is like the star of Bethlehem, guiding us to the Christ-child, Jesus, 

The Light of the World!

We had such a lovely group of ladies joined together for good food, fellowship, and also a gift exchange. Some ladies participate in a Secret Sister gift exchange throughout the year, so they reveal who they are at this gathering with their Christmas gift to their "secret sister". For those of us who do not wish to participate in the year-long secret sister idea, we each bring a gift and then we swap gifts with others who aren't in the secret sister program. That way, everyone gets a little gift. It's all very lovely and fun and a happy time.

Here's my "gift" to the ladies. I am kind of the unofficial photographer and I go around and make sure I take a picture of every woman present. Then I make this collage to share on our Church Facebook page, and send copies via email of the individual pictures to each lady. 

One of our ladies did a special little presentation which included a gift for everyone present. She read this poem to us and then told us that there would be a cup and saucer for every lady to take home with her after the meeting:

Here's my little cup and saucer (the white set), with the poem attached:

That was such a sweet idea!!

Another dear lady, who could not be present at our party due to health concerns, sent this little gift to me via another friend who is her neighbor:

It's a little lapel "Colonial Teapot Pin", and actually, she sent me two of them! She said she found them in her mother's things as she has been cleaning out her home following her passing last year, and when she saw them, she thought of me! I was so surprised and blessed by this very thoughtful gift. I may have to pass one of them on to another friend since I don't really need two of them.

Here's some of the good food we had, which was pot luck "finger foods".  

And here are the lovely gifts before we opened them. We have this party at our church "Parsonage", which is the house designated for the Pastor and his family to live in, but our Pastor already has his own home, so we use the parsonage for our ladies' UMW meetings, our Ladies' Bible study, and other smaller gatherings. We pretty much had the house full to overflowing yesterday, but it was a warm, happy time together.

Just some of the decor in the house:

Some of you will remember that my hubby and I stayed in this house for about 6 weeks the summer we moved to this town, while we waited for the closing on our new house and made some repairs on it before we could move in. It was a wonderful blessing to us to be able to live in this beautiful home temporarily.  God is so good to us.

Oh, and this gorgeous camellia bush is blooming outside the parsonage right now!

Another fun thing! You might have noticed this picture in the collage of the ladies above, and wondered why we three ladies were standing together. Well, we now have three Pamela's in our church!  Can you imagine, three of us????  We called ourselves "Three Peas in a Pod".  First there was me, (I'm in the middle), and then Pamela #2 (on the left) came down for the winter last year and we became good friends...she even made some clothes for Lily Grace you might remember and had a special Valentine's party for her... and we became the "Two Peas in a Pod"

And now there is a new "Pamela"  (on the right) who has recently started coming to our church, so now we are "Three Peas in a Pod".  No telling where this will lead!! But I look forward to getting better acquainted with our new "Pamela #3" and hope she will decide to stay with us at our church. I hope we other two Pamela's don't scare her off! LOL.

Well, friends, it's getting late, and I need to get a move on or I'll be late to my Dr. appointment.

I hope you enjoyed this little Christmas Adventure.

And always remember,

"Jesus is the reason for the season"

Jesus, The Light of the World

 Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, 

“I am the light of the world. 

He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, 

but have the light of life.”

John 8:12

P.S. I almost forgot! The gift I got from the gift swap was something I needed very much! Since this was a random "pick your gift from the gifts not designated with any name on them", the person giving the gift had no clue who would get it.  Here is what I got:

Believe it or not, I've been saying to myself quite often lately that I need a new hairbrush, and I also need a new hand mirror, with a magnifying mirror on one side and a regular mirror on the other. Well, that is exactly what I got! I was so surprised! It was like God must have told somebody (I still don't know who gave this gift as there was no name on it) to buy this gift because there would be someone at that party who really needed this exact thing!  All I can say is, "Ain't God good???"  He knows the thoughts of our hearts, He knows what we need, He knows how to provide even in the most mysterious of ways.  Our God is an awesome God!! Amen?