A Night in Bethlehem

Tonight we had a special thing go on at church. As the title suggests, we had a Roman Sentry at our entrance to the Family Life Center armed with candy canes and directing people to register. Barb & Kay Olsen were "Census takers" who registered people. The addresses collected are to be used to mail photos taken by yours truly next to the Christmas tree. I took like 50 photos of people and another dozen or so on the events itself.
Next to me was a nativity scene with a young family with their baby boy. The boy was like 6 months old and extremely cooperative. Next was a station where the people could personalize a frame that we will be sending their photos with. I believe the next station was used to teach folks to mold a statue. There were stations for making jewelry and sachets for your dresser drawers. Pastor Mike had a synagogue and occasionally blew on a horn called a shofar. Whenever he blew it, we all kind of jumped. It was loud.
We had probably twice as many folks attend than I figured since we really didn't have a lot of advertising. A surprising number of "new" people for which the name and addresses were collected from. We will send their photos to them but I imagine some church propaganda as well. It was a good night and I believe all attending had a good time. Judy Cloyd said that next year we should hold it earlier in the month and earlier than 6:00 P.M. and have some food of some sort. Since Judy will be retiring along with Pastor Mike, I guess it's up to her sucessor.