You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2008.
For the past five years, my family has used Shutterfly* to print and send out our Christmas Cards. Not only does Shutterfly take little time to turn a wonderful photo into a Christmas card, the feature-rich site doesn’t end there. Check out these time-saving options for your cards:
[Play Christmas worship music before gathering to set a special tone. You can even play the four songs you are going to sing during the service to familiarize everyone to the songs.]
Opening Prayer
Lord God, Creator of all of heaven and earth, we gather in Your holy Presence during this sacred season to remember and celebrate the birth of our precious Savior, Jesus. Open our hearts to hear Your voice of love and truth so that this time spent in Your presence will make us better examples of Your love in this world.
Forgive us of every sin so we can worship you with clean hearts. We set our hearts to worship You now. In Your holy Name we pray.
Amen.
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The offices of semo.net will be closed on Thursday, November 27th in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday.
We will resume normal business hours on Friday, November 28th.
An Advent wreath can be as simple or as elegant as you desire. Traditionally there are four candles for the four Sundays leading up to Christmas plus a candle for Christmas Eve (or Christmas Day). If you want to purchase one, you can choose between modern or traditional. Here are a few places to get you started on your search:
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One very special way our family celebrates the Christmas season is to have “Advent time” together in our home. Advent is a season where believers in Jesus Christ remember His arrival on earth as a baby in Bethlehem and ready our hearts for His return to earth as the Lord of all. Some of our favorite family memories were born during these sacred, and dare I say, silly moments huddled around our fireplace, reading from the Bible by candle light.
The seven parts of this series are:
By May of this year, the next president of the United States was narrowed down to three candidates: John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. One of those three was going to be the next President of the United States.
It was a close race between Obama and Clinton in the primaries (a race that might have changed with a little more time, or if Florida and Michigan not changed their voting schedule and forfeited their right to help direct that choice). Hillary Clinton was almost the democratic nominee and with the current economic crisis being seen as a republican-created mess, she would have most likely won the presidency. Okay, that’s enough “what if’s”.
My boys know that whenever I begin a sentence with “Back in ‘my day…’” they are about to be launched into a memory from mom’s Big Book of Remembrance where there is no yawning allowed. However, this memory from my past is both true and important (aren’t they all?) for keeping them safe.
You see, when I was a child, my parents thought nothing of letting me and my six siblings disappear deep into the neighborhood for hours on end, returning only when absolutely starving or bleeding severely. We played in other people’s houses, we walked many blocks to and from school, rode our bikes clear across town to swim with friends at the river, all this and more with no adult supervision, ever!
You wouldn’t normally think that a hearing impaired individual would get into trouble talking in class, but one teenage boy would beg to differ. Adam, who is 15, received his Cochlear implant at the age of 2 after a bout with meningitis resulting in his being diagnosed deaf. Adam doesn’t feel that his implant prevents him from being just another kid. He enjoys talking on his cell phone and says that no one at school makes fun of him and he feels very much a part of his school.
When Mardie’s mother was diagnosed with Rubella while she was pregnant, it resulted in her being born with a major hearing impairment. Although she could not hear, her parents insisted upon treating her normally and using oral language to teach her rather than sign. Growing up in the 1940s, there were no special education options available for a hearing impaired individual. Mardie attended regular public schools and learned the art of lip reading. She even went on to receive a college degree in English.
