JAM Christmas

My roommates and I celebrated Christmas together tonight. We're about to head our separate ways to celebrate with our families, so we decided last week to set aside a night to fix dinner and eat together before exchanging gifts. We made chicken parmesan with of course, sweet tea to drink. After we ate, we tackled the mound of dishes in our kitchen together and had fun with that as well. Then came the fun part, exchanging gifts. Marissa went first and got a journal and Twilight poster of Jacob from me and a Vanilla Bean Noel set (lotion, spray, and body wash) from Jenn. Jenn went next and got a set of flavored hot chocolate mixes from me and Warm Candy Apple lotion and peppermints from Marissa. I went next and got a Vanilla Bean Noel set from Jenn and Twilight Woods lotion from Marissa (we shop at Bath and Body Works a lot; can you tell? :)). We had a bunch of fun unwrapping and taking pics, as well as an accidental video with a few inside jokes:




Marissa was looking through the pictures I took of her and Jenn and thought she switched it back to the picture mode, but put it on video mode instead. It starts out with me laughing because Marissa used a plastic bag in place of tissue paper since she ran out. Jenn was joking about it and at the beginning of the video, I'm telling Marissa I had some I would've let her borrow. You can hear/guess the rest from there.

After all that fun, we decided it was about time to hang the letters we painted months ago. For the girls' birthdays, I bought them the letters of their first initials (and one for myself). We each painted and decorated our letters in our favorite colors and wrote things on there that identified us (i.e. fav Bible verses, meaningful pics, etc.). The letters have been sitting in our living room for a while and every time we see them, we comment to one another that we need to put them up on the blank wall in our living room. Tonight, we finally did. The particular ones, Jenn and Marissa, broke out the tape measure, measured to the middle of the wall, and hung my letter. Then measured half the distance for each of their letters. Above my letter, we hung our Christmas picture we took last week. The idea is for us to hang family pictures below our letters and roommate pictures above and in between. It's kinda like a family wall for us and a great way to decorate a large, blank wall.

Here are some more pics from our Christmas celebration:

Wow, what a semester!!

I can't believe the first semester of this year is already done!! It seems like just yesterday Chi Alpha was sitting outside of the bookstore with an info table and giving out water bottles the next week. This semester has flown by and it has been such a blessing for me to have been a part of it. We celebrated the ending of the semester on the 6th with a Christmas party. A good number of students attended and everyone had a blast. We enjoyed yummy food such as the traditional fondue, meatballs, veggies, red velvet cupcakes w/ a cream cheese filling, and cookie decorating. We also had a time of worship and Gil read the Christmas story from Luke.



Now that the students are home for Christmas, I've been working on getting my application for the Campus Missionary In Training program that I will be completing next year and working on my on-line classes. I (finally) finished my (rather large, 18 page) application today and sent it off in the mail. Hopefully I'll know more about the status of that around late January. I've almost finished the two on-line classes I've been taking this semester, Synoptic Gospels and Introduction to Pentecostal Theology. I have another class, Acts: Works of the Holy Spirit, that I will be working on for the rest of Christmas break. Also while the students are on break, staff is working on planning the sermon series for next semester as well as events and working on our mission trip. When the students return in January, we will hit the ground running with the mission trip. They have a deposit due the day after they return as well as a meeting that night. The following weeks, the missions team will meet once a week to eat, pray, research, and discuss our upcoming trip. Please say a prayer for this team of students as they are working to raise their funds over Christmas break.

Suubi (Hope)

This week, LUXA came back from break running. Several weeks ago, staff and student leaders decided to order a necklace kit from Light Brings Heat. These necklaces are composed of hand-made paper beads strung together. Women from the African country of Uganda make these necklaces and the company, Light Brings Heat (LBH) buys these necklaces at a fair price to sell in other countries. The women that make these necklaces receive the proceeds as a way to support their families. Each necklace comes in a box with a card. On the front of the card is a picture of the woman who made the necklace and the back gives her name, the Ugandan tribe she is a part of, and the number of children she is supporting, as well as a brief sketch of her life. Many of these women are caring not only for their own children, but also for nieces, nephews, grandchildren, and orphans. Some care for as many as 14 children. The stories that are included on the back are amazing stories of how LBH has brought hope to these families. The mothers can buy food for their families, send the children to school, and one is helping support her husband as he attends college.

We started out the week with 28 necklaces. As of lunch Tuesday, we sold roughly 16 (I don't have the numbers in front of me, so these are rough guesses). 100% of the profit we make from selling these necklaces goes straight back to the women who made them; Chi Alpha is not keeping any of the money. This is a great way for us to give back to someone else this holiday season and to teach the students at Longwood about Uganda and giving to someone else.

We began selling these necklaces on Monday during lunch (from 11-1) and dinner (from 4:30-6:30). We figured it would take us two weeks to sell all of the necklaces, but by the lunch shift on Friday, all 28 had been sold. We raised over $500 to send back to Uganda for these women to provide for their families. Way to go Chi Alpha!!

(If you would like to learn more about Suubi Africa or order any of their products, please visit http://www.suubiafrica.org/)