Christmas Program

 Boy, teaching from home makes it hard to remember to write my post at the end of the day! When I'm at school I remember because it's the last thing I do before I leave. Since I don't have to leave my apartment, I find myself forgetting about it!

Yesterday after school I had a worship planning meeting, so I popped in to church (and then zipped over to school afterward to take care of a few things). I thought the meeting would be short since we just needed to decide if we were adding a third service. It turned out we watched the Christmas program all the way through. That sounds longer than it actually took. 

It's a very pared down service; only eleven families have speaking parts. What's cool this year is that some families actually recited their parts as a family! We have moms and dads and kids splitting up the speaking parts, older sisters and/or cousins, brothers and sisters saying parts separate and together. It is so cool to watch. All of them are dressed in their Sunday best. 

The school families' videos are my favorite. The sound quality is better, a lot of them memorized their parts (even though that was optional), and they speak slowly and clearly. The bible school parts are good too, but they're more inclined to rush and read off the paper looking down so it's harder to hear them. All the videos were recorded earlier this week and our AV coordinator put them in the service in order so they play automatically. 

All together, the speaking parts take about 15min or so. Add in the congregation songs and the program will be about 45min. Perfect length. 

Right now, we have roughly 50 people signed up for each service. Not too many school families have signed up for the service, so Mrs. L sent a reminder out. Courtland people are notorious for signing up for things at the last minute (or just showing up without signing up), and Pastor is optimistic we'll have about 75-100 people at each service.