sing, sing,sing

Monday began with exercise and the park meeting. The highlight was a recounting of how much help had been given to the Mata family. It was very near to $1,000. Someone had even paid the rent for them. We thought we might see if they needed to have some car payments or something else for them. We will check with our park contact, Sharon, to see what she knows. We didn’t do much in the morning and early afternoon because we had much to do beginning at 3. I went to the hall dressed to sing in the cantata during the vesper service. We sang the same cantata, “Bethlehem’s Child”, as we did last year. And we had to rehearse until the service began at 4. I thought we did well. We left there and got into the car and drove to pick up Joe to go with us to deliver the packages to our Angel Tree child. It was a little 8 year old boy whose father is in prison. We took Joe because he speaks some Spanish and the boy’s house hold speaks no English. We had a small bit of trouble finding the house but a neighbor helped us and we learned that the boy was at a party with his mother. We gave the gifts to the grandfather he lives with. He was very appreciative, but we tried to make him know the gifts are from his father. We were not able to see the boy and couldn’t tell him that Jesus loves him but did tell the grandfather. From there we went to church for the cookies and fellowship before the Christmas Eve service. Our choir sang in front of the church before the service and then went to the choir loft to sing during the service. In all we sang around a dozen songs, some of them hard. We came home and rested until around 10:15 when Bonny and Joe picked us up and drove us to McAllen where we attended a “midnight” service featuring their grandchildren. We didn’t get to bed until 1. Everything was very spiritually uplifting except that the organist made every Christmas carol we sang an opportunity for him to give a concert. He must have lengthened the service by 15 minutes. I was really sung out by the end of the day.