Sunday--the outdoor nativity program in Manitoba

Sunday December 19th- it’s a different world here in Manitoba- the boys were dealing with the birth of 5 heifer calves overnight (as many calves as we will have in a month in Ukraine) Garry drove to Gimli Manitoba to speak at the Free church there. He also met with the adult Sunday school class and went with a half dozen people for lunch after. He left at 7:30 am got back at 4:15 pm- too late to get to Matt’s for the Sunday school outdoor nativity program. I had finished a new display board for him (the old seemed to disappear this year) and put a 10 minute powerpoint on a flash drive for him. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get it to work, so it’s good thing he’s an interesting speaker! Garry gave out some of the new prayer cards- version one- they didn’t come out as well as we hoped so I plan to print more of a newer version on Monday.
Meanwhile I went to church in Piney where Matt’s sermon was on the Christmas story from the book of John. Havilah our 2 year old granddaughter walked up and said” hi Grandma” and put her arms up for me to pick her up. I showed the 4 minute set of slides before prayer time, and answered questions for 10 minutes. Then I watched Havi and baby Keziah (after her nap) as the practice for the program happened about 2 pm.
Havilah informed me she did not need mitts on as the sun was shining and would warm her hands as she held them up. The animals showed up – pairs of miniature ponies, goats and sheep. The guys had hoped to have some of our calves or a cow there but our farm's trailer had lost a bearing on one wheel and it wasn't fixed yet. Luckily the owner of the animals could bring his in his own trailer.

While some of the older girls made comments about needing air fresheners (outdoors and –10 C no less) Havilah tried petting the ponies and was thrilled to feed the sheep some straw in their manger after filling the manger for baby Jesus and lying down in the straw in front of it, while the starry backdrop and various lights were lit (extension cords found) and the angel choir practiced singing hymns. Four-year-old Xaris is the angel on the right, bottom row with the dark pink hat with strings.
A teenaged wise man was missing and Seth beat Jonah at rock, paper, scissors to get the part. Seth’s was in the actual performance at 4:30 (the guy was still missing) as the sun was setting and the temperature was dropping (I got a couple pictures before my camera needed to be charged- I am having some problems with getting it to charge well- the plug is 220 since we bought it in Ukraine, it is a USB but doesn’t always charge on the computer).

After the short performance, everyone was invited back to the church for hot soup and cookies. Luckily it was not as cold as last weekend when it got down in the –33 Celsius range- that’s well below zero in the Fahrenheit scale too. A number of visitors came to the performance and sat on the bales of straw Matt had made for seating. Jonah helped direct traffic; Matt had cleared snow for parking with the big front end loader. There was a thudding of mitted hands after the first song and Blueberry the cat, who had come close to check out what was happening, took off across the yard like a shot. He watched from the nearby barn window after that.