Jasmine's Post-Christmas Blog!!

Greetings everyone!! Well, I meant to do this before Christmas, and obviously that didn't happen...but hey, what's a few days, right?? After all, I'm still in time for New Years so that's a point in my favor! :) Just wanted to do a little recap of the oh-so-busy month of December for you, so let's get going...

Of course, what would a Christmas blog be without Christmas lights?? I have to say, I LOVE going downtown this time of year!! This is on Oxford Street, which is where all the "high street shopping" takes place, it gets pretty crazy!

"City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style...." OK so this is the middle of the street, not the sidewalk, but it reminds me of that song!! :)

Naturally, I can't show you pictures of the city lights downtown without a picture of Harrod's!! I admit I never have actually gone inside (it probably costs money just to go into a store like that!)...but they had some pretty killer window displays!! :)

OK so moving along...at the beginning of the month, Denae and I made a little trip to Cardiff to visit the folks at the Bible College there since she hadn't had a chance to go yet! We had a great time visiting with our friends (who I'm sure you recognize from my October Wales blog!)...

...and of course when you have a couple worship leaders like Denae and Amber together, music is going to be involved somehow!

During the first part of the month, we also did a few special things for fun...like a Christmas concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London!! This picture hopefully captures how amazing this place was!!

I threw this shot in as well so you can see the HUGE organ on the right hand side of the picture. Let me tell you, I don't think I've ever heard a more powerful instrument--and the concert as a whole was just as great! I was reminded that the gift of music is one of the most beautiful things God has given to mankind!!

We also took a little jaunt to the British Museum! A few years ago, my dad put together a little tour of "The British Museum in Bible Light" which he takes groups on from time to time...so we decided to go do it!

OK so here's my plug for the British Museum--because if any of you come to London, you HAVE to check it out! For one thing, it holds some of the most important archaeological finds in history...like the Rosetta Stone pictured here! It was because of this "document" that scholars were able to first decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, so it's considered by many to be the most significant discovery of all time! And you can see it right here in London, how about that?!? :)

OK so there are loads of pictures I could have included, but believe it or not, this is one of my favorite things in the museum--an Egyptian brick probably made by Hebrew slaves during the time of the Exodus!! As a Christian, probably one of the neatest things about the British Museum is to see how much archaeological evidence and support there is for Biblical people and places as described in Scripture. It's definitely an encouragement to our faith to see how these things validate God's Word!!

It's a good thing I was paying attention when my dad gave us the tour, because a couple weeks later I took Lauren, Maxine, and Rachel (Maxine's friend)!!

Moving on to church activities...we had a women's Christmas party at the beginning of December, which went really well!

Here are some of the ladies who came!!

We also had a chance to host another girls' sleepover!

Here's a little group photo of our last Wednesday night Bible study before we took a "break" for Christmas! What a blessing this study has been!! I also had an opportunity to teach at a women's Bible study for Calvary Chapel South London around this time, but I forgot to take pictures of that!! :(

A week before Christmas, we sadly had to say good-bye to Denae...she definitely was a huge blessing here in many ways!! This is a shot of her farewell party we had after church.




Here's a picture of everyone who came to church the last Sunday before Christmas...we were actually surprised that this many people were still around, as several folks go away for the holidays, so that was encouraging!




That's all for now folks...until next time, buh-bye!!
Oh, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!! May you grow more and more in your relationship with Jesus Christ and experience all that He wants to do in your life in 2008!!!

When Worlds Collide--An American Thanksgiving in London!!

Greetings everyone!! I meant to do this post last week but got a bit busy!! Nevertheless, it's still closer to Thanksgiving than Christmas, so that has to count for something!! :) Anyways, we were able to rent out a room and host a dinner for everyone in the church...plus some folks brought guests, so it turned into a bit of an outreach as well!

So here we are getting set up for the big dinner! We had around 30 people come so there was quite a bit of cooking and prep work!!

Here's my mom and Denae getting the pumpkin pies and cornbread ready...these are both pretty unusual things for the Brits to eat, so we were proud of them for being "adventurous!" Some of them actually had cornbread last year so they requested that we make it again!

My dad gave a brief Thanksgiving "devotional" before we got started with the meal.

So here we are beginning our feast!

Here's Justin, Tom, and Penny (whose name you might recognize from my newsletters!). I'm not sure if Justin was signalling for me not to take the picture or if he was just full from eating too much!

Here's another group photo...

...and here's me and Maxine and Denae after dinner.

Probably the highlight of our Thanksgiving dinner was a recording we made of "The 12 Days of Christmas" with everyone there! Denae and I recorded the music beforehand and then she put together groups of people to sing for the different "days." We thought it would be like pulling teeth to get everyone involved, but they all jumped in and had fun with it...and I have to say, it turned out pretty amazing! Plus it really seemed to bring everyone together, even those who came as guests!! :)

Justin, Carl, and Lee did some pretty crazy renditions of the "partridge in a pear tree."

The "12 drummers drumming" were sung by Analynn and her two boys (Jack and James--they were in a previous blog post). SO cute!! :)

Gwen, Penny, Lyn, Jackie, and Simone were our "nine ladies dancing."

Alistair and Dan did the "3 french hens."

Kevin and his friends were "4 calling birds" (and there were 4 of them singing, how about that!).

And of course, we had to have someone do "five golden rings," so Evan belted that one out! :)



So that's our Thanksgiving in London! We had a blast and the Lord really blessed our evening together! Even as I'm speaking of Thanksgiving, I have to say that I am SO thankful to be a part of such a sweet fellowship here in London...there's alot of love and unity in our body here, God has been very good to us!!