Christmas!

Christmas was crazy busy here, but so good!  At the Center, we estimate that we gave gifts to 200 children (with the help of sponsors and friends all over the country), gift cards for the grocery store and restaurants to 65 families, 250 treat bags to members of the community and 18 cookie trays for friends of the Center.  We were a tad busy.

The bag making team!

Some of Santa's workshop

After all of the baking and wrapping, my family showed up for about a week to celebrate Christmas with me here in South Dakota.  I am incredibly grateful for how supportive my family has been throughout my whole life, but especially since starting seminary.  I have struggled over the last two and a half years to figure out what it means for me to be a pastor.  It's a hard profession to go into, knowing that everybody I meet has a pretty personal understanding of faith/church/God/religion/spirituality, whether that's a positive or negative sense of things.  And, once people find out that I'm becoming a pastor, they feel free to share any and all of their thoughts about my profession and what it means to them.  I've gotten pretty used to it, but I've also watched my family adjust to my profession.  I am blessed to have a family that is supportive and willing to meet me where I am to celebrate.  Last year, everyone came to Chicago for Easter, since I needed to be at my Ministry in Context (field site placement) congregation.  This year, they came west for Christmas.  I was responsible for services at the Presbyterian congregation and the Episcopal congregation.

Not about where you're at, but who you're with!

During the Episcopal service, I looked out and realized how out of place my family looked and really, how out of place they were.  We have celebrated Christmas Eve service at Zion Lutheran Church in Indiana, Pennsylvania, every year since we've lived there.  Now, here were the people who love me most in the world, huddled into an Episcopal congregation on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in South Dakota.  They were singing Silent Night in Lakota in a tiny country church with only a wood stove for heat.  It was so cold that there was a jug of water under the pulpit frozen in a block.  Did I mention that we do frontier ministry here?  They strategized how much liquid to drink before the service, since they didn't want to use the outhouses in the negative degree weather we have.

When I signed up for seminary, I really didn't think about what it meant for my family--sorry, y'all.  But to see them in South Dakota, ready to hear me preach the Gospel, the good news, while stumbling through the Lakota hymns and wondering what the heck they had signed up for, was an awesome gift.  I am so blessed and honored to have them in my life.  :)

Taking the traditional family on Christmas Eve in a less than traditional spot.