Great Weekend!!!

This weekend was crazy, but it was fantastic! As you may recall, this past weekend we had a retreat with the youth at the church. We had a smaller group than we hoped for, but it was a weekend of fun, memories, and quality teaching. The theme of the weekend was "It's a Wonderful Life." We talked about how God desires us to live 'wonderful' lives for Him filled with risk taking and Spirit led living. Over the course of the weekend, we gave many examples of heroes of the Christian faith, both from the Bible and from modern times (from Abraham, to the apostles, to St. Patrick, to Hudson Taylor, to Billy Graham). As for fun, we did everything from an 'Amazing Race,' to a midnight Christmas party, to a zip line, and of course the obligatory bonfire.

Yesterday afternoon, we had signups and evaluations for our basketball leagues forming in Janurary for 4th-7th graders up in Ballymun. We had a turnout of 26 guys and 16 girls, which is about the normal size for both our guys' and girls' leagues. We will try to recruit a few more in the next couple weeks, especially a few more girls to allow us to have 4 girls' teams. The kids are almost all new to the game and they loved the drills that we had them do yesterday.

Finally, last night, we had the second carol service and winter wonderland at the church. The kids were much more behaved for the Winter Wonderland and for the short skit that the youth put on for them. I got a chance to close at the end and talked a little bit about making Jesus the Lord of your life and how to ask Jesus into your heart. The kids seemed to all really enjoy everything we did and went away with some great Christmas candy.

Erin went right back at it today as she had her last day of student teaching at St. Andrews. We are still waiting to hear if she will get a paid position there after the new year, but it sounds promising.

Tomorrow, we have the chance to get away for a few days. We came upon some great deals on flights to Paris, so we are taking the opportunity to spend 3 some time there. Both of us are extremely excited as you might expect and it will be a fun way to celebrate Erin being done with school and also taking in all of the Christmas lights in Paris.

Hope you are all having a great month and we will be thinking of many of you over the Christmas holiday. Thank you so much for your continued prayers.

Merry Christmas!

Tyler and Erin