Stories and Songs

December 10, 2025

On this Wednesday night we celebrated our annual "Stories and Songs" emphasis of the Nativity and God's gifts to us associated with Jesus' birth. The sanctuary was decorated for Christmas.

Pastor Doug welcomes the group of parents and families of our Awana boys and girls, as well as members of our church. After his opening prayer, we begin this year's reflection on the favorite gifts of the Christmas season. This year's approach was to enlist boys and girls from the Awana program and youth from our youth program to carry microphones and interview adults in the audience about their favorite things about Christmas as well as stating their own favorites.

To prepare the Awanas for their role as reporters to interview the adults present about their Christmas favorites, Leigh Miller did interviews and photos of a number of the Awanas.

With this background of favorite Christmas ideas, four members of the Second Grade Awana group were called up and given microphones to act as reporters to ask adult members of the audience about their favorite Christmas memories.

These Awanas were given microphones to interview adult members of the audience about their Christmas favorites.

Then members of the Kindergarten Sparks group were commissioned as young reporters to highlight Christmas memories. They were accompanied by Ms. Betty, one of their leaders.

Interspersed in these events was the singing of several familiar Christmas carols, led by Jared Coronado and played by Marsha Thompson. Everyone seemed to really enjoy the carols.

We also enjoyed a solo piano piece played by one of the Awanas.

The next part of the program involved readings of the story of the birth of Jesus by the Awana boys and girls and scripture readings by members of the youth program. First were readings by Awanas.

We moved to alternate readings by Awana boys and girls and by youth. The Awana readings were pf the Christmas story and the birth of Jesus based on scripture. Then the youth read specific Bible passages and they were directed to hold the Bible and limit their material to the Scripture passages. The Awanas are on the left and the youth are on the right below.

The singing of a number of favorite carols, led by Jared, contributed to the spirit of Christmas joy and worship.

At the end of the program we had the usual photo time, and we enjoyed the photo time with the Cubbie group.