An acquaintance of mine was nice enough to point out I had a gross amount of typos and grammatical errors in the last posting I linked you all to. I apologize to everyone!! Please know, Dr. MacDonald can write and write well. His poor granddaughter did not inherit her paternal grandmother’s typing skills and it shows. : P That said, I believe these errors seriously detracted from his writing and for that I‘m sorry. I have corrected the problems that I found but, I will not boast they are all found and fixed so please alert me to any typographical errors at carolj@gmail.com. Thank you.

Proverbs 23:12 Apply your heart to instruction and your ears to words of knowledge.

I did a little rearranging on the blog template. You may not even notice the changes. Hopefully I didn't do anything damaging. : P I sure wish I knew more about HTML. I've been thinking of designing a whole new page but, other things are higher on the priority list. I'm thinking, something like a dark chocolate border with an off white page with an elegant black font. Oh, and a photo montage with scripture at the top. I know....if it ever gets done it might be a minor miracle!

Last year I posted a paper my grandfather wrote about Christmas. It's a longer read and worth it if you seriously want to learn about the roots.

My family doesn't celebrate Christmas. At least, not in the 'normal' way. We don't do trees, the gift exchange, or Santa. We focus on what we do throughout the year, giving to people who can't give back. Our concert on Monday morning at the nursing home we count a privilege, as we do every concert. Because we were there maybe someone will stop and think about the real reason Christ came when we point not only to the manger but also to the cross and Jesus‘ ultimate sacrifice. Perhaps something will be stirred in their soul as they hear strains of the familiar songs speaking of the Lord's birth sung by a family, in the world of broken families, of one that is together. The witness of a family together serving the Lord is, sadly, not often seen. When they reflect back, in quietness of their own hearts, I pray the words of the scripture songs come back to them and the Holy Spirit will convict them of sin and their need for the Savior. We plant the seeds and the Lord gives the increase. Praise and thanks be to the King immortal, invisible, the only true God forever and ever.

Psalm 96:5-6 For all the God's of the nations are idols, but the LORD made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before Him, strength and glory are in His sanctuary.

We did three concert Sunday. We had to be up before the crack of dawn to get out the door on time and so I was able to catch the sunrise.



We parked on the grass in the morning. :-) It was quite interesting since we had to fill up more time than the normal hour and we were pulling things out we hadn’t played since the fall tour. The folks there were so sweet and helped us pack up in a jiffy. We had a nice lunch and fellowshipped until it was time to head off to concert #2.



On the way over we saw our ‘old church’, actually, just the building. They had sold the building years ago. It brought back memories anyway…

And not more than 3 minutes away was this lovely old tree.




The church made up this cool sign..


And here is Bonnie documenting me taking pictures ….lol. She’s having a fun time with her camera. :-)



We had no time to eat afterward because we had 1 ½ hours to breakdown, load, get the next church and set up. Did I mention the next church was half an hour away? :-) Some of the folks made up some food packages and sent them with us. Very sweet of them! We arrived, got set up on time and did our third concert of the day. We ended up staying for the Yankee swap and didn’t get home until just after 9:30pm. Phew. A nice full day.

I started getting a headache during the last concert but didn’t actually start feeling sick until we got home. :- / All day Monday I was in bed with flu like symptoms. Food smelled repulsive and I lived on 5 crackers and water until noon time today. I feel MUCH better now. I’m so thankful I didn’t come down with this on Sunday morning! That would have been, um, interesting. I was feeling nauseated on Saturday night but I chalked it up to getting ‘car’ sick since I was practicing while we were driving. So anyway…I haven’t been near a computer until this afternoon. I’m making up for it now…ha! Praying no one else will get whatever I got...

I’m overwhelmed by God’s mercy and awed at His greatness. How great a love is this -that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. What wondrous love is this! Jesus went to the cross willingly, laying down His life willing for me, and for you. How many times today did you thank God for His gift of salvation? I don’t think it’s possible to over thank God for the Salvation we have in Christ. Some of the world will be celebrating Christmas in a little while. Never forget that Jesus did not stay a helpless babe in a manger. He grew up, went on to live a sinless life, perform many miracles and eventually died on a cruel cross. 11 of the 12 disciples were killed, martyrs for Christ. Are you willing to follow Jesus whatever the cost?