This year New Year's Day fell on Sunday so we were happy to go to Sunday school and church.
We stayed in last night for New Years Eve and my husband made this delicious tray for us. We were in bed well before midnight.
Our church is located north of us one hour away in Erie, Pennsylvania. We leave for church an hour early and arrive at least ten or fifteen minutes before Sunday School begins.
The theme for today's Sunday School lesson was reviewing where we left off in December while Pastor and the play cast for the Christmas play practiced lines for the play for the past few Sundays prior to the play. I was excited to go and work with a friend preparing cookie trays for a fellowship following the play, but I was hit unexpectedly with a nasty sinus infection. I had to content myself with watching the live stream which, for whatever reason, had audio transmission issues. I was happy that those who went to the church were able to fully enjoy the fruit of their hard labor from the sets to the period clothing it went off quite well.
The lesson today resumed on how to share the gospel message. We reviewed the verses in the Bible that share who we are without Christ, what God says about those who are not in the Lord and how easy it is to gain the gift of eternal life simply by acknowledging we are sinners and by asking Jesus to forgive and save us. Pastor handed out a credit card sized help card which he created to give to us to take with us so that we always have the verses close if we find someone who would like to learn how to go to Heaven.
Front
Back
The sermon that followed was in the book of James and Pastor shared the importance of letting go out the past failures and attachments that hinder us from getting closer to God. He told us to stop looking back. He called a young man up to illustrate this point and asked him to run around the sanctuary. He went quickly unhindered. He then gave the man a mirror and told him to run but to look in the mirror rather than straight ahead. His path was much slower the second trip.
He told us that we have sins we stubbornly hold on to because their weight isn't something we recognize, or aren't willing to let go of. He called another man up to run around the sanctuary. He was older than the first, but he was quick, too. He then handed him a dumbell that looked to be 25 pounds and asked him to run. This time was definitely slower.
I think the illustrations worked well because I remembered them. I'm sure others will, too.
After church we went to Taco Bell drive through then took food for when we stopped at my husband's daughter's house to pick up the eyedrops she brought him home from work. They both work in eyes. She was an eye technician. She and her husband have two children. I missed watching gifts being opened Saturday because of the migraine so I was happy to be able to see the little ones. My gifts had been well received. The sparkling putty for under a dollar was the three year old's favorite.
Dinner was left overs; left over sushi for Jeff and left over steak, potatoes and asparagus for me and my son.
After dinner I cut my son's hair. I never like cutting hair, but he asked me to. He purchased a set of clippers so I took care of that task after washing dishes.
It's back to work for me tomorrow since the first happened on a weekend we get a floating holiday to use some other day. It's kind of a let down, but since I enjoyed a five day holiday for Christmas, I'll accept it.
My goals are something I am working on. Today I did #HPUD for 120 HIVE.
I don't really know much about ALIVE yet, but I was gifted 500 Alive yesterday (Thank You).
My goals are simply to write more and engage as often as work permits. I was gifted LUV by Wess from The Terminal so I look for ways to share this LUV around, too. LUV is like a smile; it's free to share and makes other people happy.
This is my selfie taken before leaving for Sunday School this morning. All photos are mine and were taken on my Galaxy Note 22 Ultra Plus. I paid too much for the phone, but I wanted the camera 😍.