MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!

Oh my goodness I do not think my daughter will make it through the night, we are having our Christmas tomorrow as we will be on the road Christmas Eve and with my fam on Christmas day and my goodness she has been bouncing around here all day long with excitement! I so love that, and so am going to miss it when they hit "that age" and my babies are too old to wake up at 5am and come jump on the bed and ask if we can get up yet.........well maybe will "eventually" miss that...LOL.
I just wanted to quickly wish all of you reading a very Merry Christmas and may the JOY of this holiday and our Savior find you where you are! We have been talking alot about Joy these last few weeks with the kids and the difference between Joy and Happiness....there is a difference ya know!
Happiness-as long as conditions are right and I get what I want I will be happy.
Joy-(as we have been defining it) is a delightful contentment from knowing Christ! And that Joy can and will be with you no matter what your condition or place in life! I have experienced it myself in a fathers death followed by an overwhelming sense of Joy in knowing he opened his eyes to see the face of God! Or when the checkbook does not match up to what the family budget says it needs to be happy...Joy in knowing the one who cares for me has promised to meet ALL my needs according to His riches in glory! WHOO!
I love the Lord, love all of you and am so thankful for the awesome year we have had and even more for the one in 2011 I know we will have!
You guys be safe, have a great Christmas and I will see you in the Zone this Sunday as we finish up with one final lesson on the Joy of knowing Christ and look at another name for our Savior in our continued series on the names of Jesus!
God bless and c-ya!
Pastor Darren

Snowflakes...and a big mess!

Hey Everybody!

How are you? I hope your all enjoying the happy holiday season? We here in the children's ministry are so excited that in the last week we kicked off our winter quarter with a teaching series on the names of Jesus! And a quick "thing that makes you go hmmm" is not God the coolest in how He works out things like only He can in that we began this series the very same week the adult crowd kicked off the "a.k.a God" series with Pastor Aaron????

Hey I'm good but even I could not have foreseen this happening but thankfully God does and works out these little details that I so appreciate Him for!

We had a BLAST this last week with our first name (Messiah) and also making snowflakes to liven up the Blast kids area...man did we make a mess but had such fun!

I hope all of you are keeping Christ where He belongs and that is at the center of anything you have planned for this holiday and have just a great Christmas season! This week we will be studying the name of Jesus (Gift of God) and the JOY that comes with knowing Christ as our Savior!

Have a great week and look forward to seeing you in the ZONE!

Pastor Darren