A Doua Zi A Craciunului - the 2nd Day of Christmas

While much of the English speaking world celebrates Boxing Day (and those in America celebrate after-Christmas clearances & long lines for returns), we in Romania celebrate "the second day of Christmas." In the village of Bahnea, the children's Christmas program was held on the 26th. Our team has worked with the church in Bahnea for several years, and our translator Gabi was responsible for planning and directing this year's Christmas program - so a bunch of us loaded up in the car & made the trek out to the village to enjoy the show.

And what a show it was! I'm not sure where Gabi got the idea, but she decided to tell the Christmas story as a news broadcast. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, she and the kids spent a lot of weekend and evening hours recording "interviews" with the shepherds, the angels, people on the streets in Bethlehem, etc. Then she edited all of the clips into a news broadcast. Most of the kids got to do the "hard part" ahead of time, without an audience (which helped eliminate the nerves, giggles, etc. that often punctuate children's programs), leaving only the two "anchors" to do their parts live during the service while cutting away to "on the scene" reporters shown on the monitor. SOOOOO much work, but excellently done!

The anchorman & anchorwoman (on the right) speaking to a

"prophecy expert" (on the monitor).

All of the kids involved in the program

After the program, the kids all received their Christmas boxes from Samaritan's Purse & Operation Christmas Child. The boxes are such a blessing to our kids - and it was so much fun to watch some of them open their boxes and discover the treasures inside. For those of you who helped packed shoeboxes this year, thank you for your sacrifices on the behalf of children around the world. (In case you were wondering, this year it appeared that the boxes distributed here were from the UK.)