Nativity

On the first Sunday of December, our little Corry branch had our own Nativity open house for two hours before the broadcast. Our stake back home did this on a large level, and it was something that I'd enjoyed going to the last few years before we moved. So we took this idea to our leaders and did it on a smaller scale in our little building. The Corry branch had never done this before and everyone was excited. Mom put an ad in the local paper- it was open to the public. We put a sign out front of our building too. It was a lot of work to find all our sets and to set up/take down the event, but people from the branch really enjoyed themselves and we even got a visitor from the community. Our visitor turned out to be friends with one of our members, that was nice.

In all we had 55 Nativity sets from the members of our branch, including all the little ones. It was fun to see all the ones that everyone owned. It was also fun to dig out all of ours, we don't always have room to display them all in our home at Christmas.

My porcelain one I brought home from Utah (one of my faves):

Thought this simple little wooden one was cute:

This set is from Africa and it's owner didn't know why Mary was larger and not to scale. I was all "I know! I know!" because I learned in art history that often size denotes importance in African art and that is why Mary is larger. This set is carved from soapstone and I really liked its style.

This set was pretty, too:

It was a challenge to find this one of mine, but a lot of people liked it:

We had the nearest missionaries come as well (Corry has not had its own missionaries for a year now, please appreciate yours if you have them!) and one even played the violin for us, it was beautiful. Mom was pretty much in charge of this event and relied on me to help her (while I was helping with the two other parties!) so I was busy. People really liked it and I wouldn't be surprised if we did this again in the future.

One of our members works at the local paper, he is having a story and photos about it printed in the community page of the local paper. An event like this is a great way to try to involve the community.

We watched the broadcast from Salt Lake that evening too, it was so nice to hear the speakers and the choir. Last year church was canceled on that day due to snow so we missed the broadcast too. I've come to really enjoy the broadcast in recent years.

I feel very merry this season, I love it. I love singing Christmas carols. The other day I was in Sparty and the little white church's bells were ringing Christmas carols on the hour. It was so beautiful that I just wanted to cry. I feel so blessed.