Our First Christmas Banquet

I must confess, I felt a bit proud last night at our Christmas banquet. It was the first time our two churches came together. Since the second church started back in October I have been trying to work on comaradery between the two groups. They are both so different, economically, socially, worlds apart. Our first church has more middle class people. Our second church are mostly all poor people. But last night the two churches came together for a Christmas dinner and I felt like they treated each other with a lot of love and respect. It was beautiful. Our church people here took care of cooking the food and the second church took care of the drinks. We had pork leg, salad, rice and corn, rolls and a special Christmas dessert they make here called "torejas". It was soooo good. We rented a big bus to get everybody to the hall for the meal. These people were soooo excited. Especially to the poorer people this was a very special treat, they were really looking forward to this. After the meal we handed out two big fruit baskets to those who had special stickers under their seats. Boy were they all smiles when they won those. Then Hannah handed out twenty apple bread loaves that she made for each of the families at the second church. Apples are very special here at Christmas and a bit pricey, so they were very happy to get their apple bread. Hannah also plans to give out loaves to our people here and also to the neighbors. Between the two groups I think there were close to 90 people there last night. To me this is a high watermark in our ministry. I'm so thankful for how God has helped us this year. I'm looking forward to an even better year in 2009.