Christmas Program #2

Our church has a big family Christmas program every year. The choir sings, the children sing, we have a brass band, the audience participates in 12 Days of Christmas, and more. Pastor David Walker (shout out!) does such a great job putting it all together. Although I don't get to sing with the choir on Sunday mornings due to my Children's Ministries duties, I am always so excited to participate in special programs.

Here I am dressed in all black on the front row singing my heart out.

I direct all of the children's portions of the program. Here are all the preschoolers singing their three songs: "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town", "Wasn't That A Mighty Day?", "Jesus, Oh, What A Wonderful Child". They did a great job and were very cute.

Preston is the 5th child from the left in the blue shirt.

I'm singing my solo in the song "I'll Be Home For Christmas". I'll admit, I don't know how well I did. In all my years of training, we were taught to sing without a microphone and monitors. So, this was very different for me. I was told I sounded good. :)

I was very excited about the Elementary children's portion of the program. Pastor David told me which song the children would be singing with the adult choir and left the details up to me. The song was done with black lights and white gloves and looked AWESOME!!!! We had about 30 kids participate which is the most I've had in a program. I think the kids were just as excited about the song. They had to wear all black (that's why I did too) and we passed out white gloves. Pastor John Cruz (shout out!), the Children's Pastor, and his wife Christi were so supportive and let me take time during Sunday service to practice with the kids.

Kaitlyn did a great job performing.

So cool!

Love it!

This was the end of the song and the lyrics say "to God". I had all the kids lift their hands up to God and shimmer. It was still dark in the sanctuary, but Craig was able to get the picture to come out like this.

I heard so many great things about this song. One child came up to me afterwards and said he felt like a superstar! I am so glad they enjoyed themselves.

I have a Children's Performing Arts ministry called Enhance that has been meeting every Wednesday before evening activities at church. This ministry is to teach kids there are many ways to worship God such as sign language, drama, human video, singing, puppets, etc. It also prepares them for Children's Fine Arts, which is a big program in Assemblies of God. I currently have 11 kids in the program. Our rehearsal time is changing in January and I will have more kids joining then. Pastor John has been my biggest supporter for this program.

There is a beautiful song that the adult choir sang called "I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day". I asked Pastor David if Enhance could do sign language to this and of course he said yes. This was Enhance's first performance and they did such a great job!

It was a great night and I am so extremely proud of all the kiddos. As soon as the program was over and I started to walk off stage, exhaustion hit me. Having a big program like this end is always bittersweet for me. I am thankful for the gifts God has given me to share with others. I am extremely thankful to have such supportive pastors that allow me to use my gifts. Now, what to plan for next year?