Christmas Cantata

Yesterday, Sunday, before the evening service, the children did their Christmas cantata. It was interesting idea, as a group of children imagined how Christmas was from the point of view of the bugs. So as you can see, we had spiders, bees, fleas, lightning bugs and even ladybugs.

It’s hard to believe when we first came to the church and the children’s choir sang, there were only about 10 kids or so. The children’s worship team has done quite a job integrating the children from the “invasion" next door and the kids who come to church. In addition, one of our seminary students does local evangelism and has been able to add a lot of kids of live nearby.

The cantata involved about 90 children if you can believe that. It was quite a production to get things rolling, as a goodly portion of the kids don’t count on parental support or help. When you do a project like this, that is so important. So it was necessary to buy the uniforms, and do the make-up at church (I helped with the ladybugs). There was an all afternoon practice on Saturday. We provided the kids with a supper. I even chipped in with a pot of rice. Some of these kids only get a decent hot meal at school or church. After the practice, they gave everyone a backpack full of school supplies (our new school year will start in February), as that’s what the kids wanted for Christmas. It was a quite a job for Clare (our coordinator) to raise the money and buy all the supplies for 100 children!

The neat thing about this cantata is that each type of bug sang their presentation and so everyone didn’t have to learn everything! Of course at the end, everyone sang everything. It was pretty impressive seeing that many kids.

They ended up bringing “Mom and Dad” and their aunts, uncles and cousins, so even at 5PM, the church was almost full. You know how parents are when their kids sing. We even had a priest present… I think the kids or their parents told him about it. He liked it and even stayed for the evening worship afterwards. In fact most folks stayed, so our Christmas service was quite full. It was a contemporary service, with typical Brazilian music, although we did close with Silent Night, complete with falling rose petals from the ceiling.

In our morning service the main sanctuary choir did pieces from the Messiah, so it was quite a contrast! Made for a great Sunday. We won’t be doing services on the 24th or 25th, as we decided not to swim against the current. No one complained. We did provide folks with a program for a home worship service. We have no fancy plans for Christmas day, since this is the year the girls will go to their mother’s house. Christmas, however, is always special as we celebrate Jesus’ birth.