Our Rainforest Adventure: Christmas program 2011

We are so thankful that God gave us the opportunity and ability to work with our teens in performing a Christmas drama. It was a lot of fun and hard work. And very challenging due to my language limitations. However, it also expanded our language vocabulary and verb forms. God helped and for that we are extremely thankful.

Having a program like this was a "new thing" for our churches. We have heard that they didn't even know what to expect when they came that night for our program. How exciting for us. They have Christmas eve services but they remind me more of a Thanksgiving type service. In reacting against the traditions and celebrations of the Catholic church, the evangelicals seemed to do little to celebrate the holidays like Christmas and Easter. It is exciting to see the churches that are trying to do a little more to incorporate the Story of His birth into their Christmas eve services.
We began practicing the 2nd to last Sat. in Oct and met every Saturday afternoon until our program the 23rd of December. The teens did an awesome job and were committed and faithful to the practices. They had to find their own way to the practice and then we took them home. We had participants from all our churches except Monte Pascoal. Making it a total of 11 cast members. We wanted more but are thankful for the ones that participated. Maybe next year more will join in now that they know what it is all about. To work with the teens and minister to them was a purpose for this drama.

Eating snack after a long practice

Visiting

To have my house full of laughing teens filled my heart to overflowing. That is one of biggest things I've missed since leaving our ministry in Schenectady.

It was a very simple drama. Simple because we wrote it and since it was a 1st time thing we didn't want to go overboard. We have to have to work towards. :) Maybe next year.

It was scripture based narration, telling of the Jesus birth. We had 2 narrators and the actors acted out what was being read. We started with the prophecy of Isaiah, the angel visiting Mary and Joseph, their trip to Bethlehem, the birth of Christ, and the visit from the Shepherds. We ended with a scene with the manger and a cross behind it.

The message of the drama was Jesus, The Light of the World. We tried, with God's help, to reveal how "dark" it was in the lives of the Hebrew people and how Christ's birth brought hope and light to the dark world. We ended talking about how Satan had tried to extinguish that Light even resulting in Christ's death. But how that Light shone brighter because the plan of Salvation was complete. Pr. Arilson from Cidade de Deus closed the service with a challenge. No one came forward to pray but I know hearts were touched by the message and it has caused different ones to look the Christmas story in a new way.

The teens also performed 9 choir numbers. It was a joy to teach them the Christmas carols in the church hymnal and teach them about following music and how to sing properly. That was Stephen's department. Next year, we would like to teach them about parts, it was a challenge enough this year to get everyone singing on tune and with the right timing. The only song that they knew out of the hymnal was Angels we have heard on high. This was another purpose for this drama, to teach the Christmas songs. Our song list included He Shall be Called, Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel, Fairest Lord Jesus, Away in the Manger, Joy to the World, Silent Night, Angels We Have Heard On High, Angels From the Realms of Glory and Down From His Glory. For congregational singing we sang/taught O Come All ye Faithful, Joy to the World and the 1st Noel. Our choir sounded beautiful!! We are so proud of our teens.

The drama was performed at Rio Solimoes. They have an outside platform that was perfect. We witnessed a miracle that day. Why? Because we are in the start of the rainy season and it DID NOT rain! It poured down rain between 9-11am but for the program it did not. Dark clouds would come and then pass. God answered prayer! Praise the Lord.

I could ramble on and on, but I will let the pictures tell the rest of the story. Sorry some of the pictures are blurry. I was trying to take them in the midst of directing and holding up song cards. One thing that was different was people from the congregation were actually up on the platform taking pictures and standing right in the front of the platform taking pictures like for the entire program. I wasn't able to get a picture of Joseph's scene because there was a person standing right in front of me. I know who to go to now to get more and better pictures from that night. :)