Merry Christmas Frohe Weinachten Feliz Navidad Joyeaux Noel

Here we are, near the end of another year and celebrating Christ's birth with family, friends and way too much food! We have received many Christmas cards/letters/photos from friends and family near and far. I love those. They are sometimes the only contact we have throughout the year (that's right, not everyone is on facebook!) and I can replace the pictures on my "wall of fame" and see how much families have changed in a year. The pictures stay up year round and for those that don't send pictures every year the old ones stay up until new ones are sent (hint, hint!!). We try and pray for a family every night before the kids go to bed. One of the kids will run to the wall and choose a family, sometimes they need to be reminded who the family is, we tell them how we know that unfamiliar family, and then pray for them. After a while the kids will tell us who the now familiar family is and how we know them and they look forward to hopefully meeting them one day. This year instead of a long-winded letter we did a Top 20 of our year. I think next year we'll go back to the letter style, there was a lot left out of the list! Here it is....

 

This year we’ve decided to do a “Krahn Top 20 of 2012”

(We couldn’t narrow it down to 10!)

In no particular order....

1     Camping with G&G Voth (kids)

2     Turtle Mountain Bible Camp (N & L)

3     Family Camp

4    Camping trip to Drumheller, Banff, Jasper and Edmonton

5     Sports Camp (N)

6    Soccer (kids)

7     Nathan making his first big purchase, a camera

8     A girl Voth cousin

9    Skating

10   Gt-ing behind the quad in winter

11    Music lessons (N-piano, L-violin)

12   Dance (B)

13   Friends moving back to Manitoba from Iowa

14   Nathan turning 10 & in Grade 5

15   Larissa turning 7 & in Grade 2

16   Bethany turning 5 & in Kindergarten!!

17   Swimming lessons

18   Girls donating 10” long ponytails to “The Little Hairpiece”

19   Successful farming year

20  God’s many blessings throughout the year!

We hope this season has been filled with much love and happiness and the knowledge that Jesus came down from heaven in human form to bring us love, hope, peace and joy and to have a personal relationship with each of us. For those who struggle with this time of year we pray that you have the same knowlegde and that he is the God of Comfort. Merry Christmas!!

A Community's Nightmare

It takes a lot to make me cry but today's violent act at an elementary school in Connecticut has tears streaming down my cheeks. I've been working at the local high school (grade 7 - 12) for the last seven weeks. It feels like the safest place on earth. Kids laugh, skip down the hallways, tell the teachers about the fun things they've done (like last night's school dance), and also tell them about their troubles and know that people care. That's how it should be. We shouldn't have to practise lockdown drills but because of acts like today those drills are a normal part of school life. My heart breaks for those families whose innocent children and teachers had their lives cut short. The loss the families of the victims will feel will be overwhelming. It is the Christmas season, they should be looking forward to laughter, presents, great food and meaningful family times. Now they will have an empty spot at the table, unopened presents and broken hearts. Lives forever changed by one act. One man. I pray for those families and friends.

It is the Christmas season. Lives forever changed by one act. One God. I pray also for the family of the shooter. I don't know what led up to today, and I'm not going to pretend to know, but this family also lost someone. The guilt, the what-ifs, the sorrow will overwhelm this family too. Please pray for them.

Hopefully one day Christmas will mean Love. Hope. Peace. Joy. for these families again.