The Multiage and Middler classes were combined last Sunday, so I had a healthy crew of 15 kids with me on the first Sunday of Advent!  Thanks so much to Tim Haggerty and Sean Perham who helped out with our large group.  We began this new season by learning a new song, Wait for the Lord, which is so pretty and so simple.  Click here to listen to the version of the song we sang!  As we sang the song over and over, we lit candles around the circle until the room was filled with light.  So cool to have so many children on this day!  We then used tiles and stones to count out all the days and Sundays until Christmas (4 Sundays, 28 days!) and talked about what we do while we wait for Christmas to arrive (decorate, make cookies, get a Christmas tree, buy presents, go to church).  Then we told the story from the first chapter of Matthew when an angel visited a sleeping Joseph to give him the news that his fiancée Mary was pregnant with the son of God.  We wondered what kind of man Joseph must have been, based on the verses that we read: trustworthy, kind, a true believer, and brave were some of the children’s thoughts.  Our activities included creating our own angel ornaments, making holiday cards for the Concord Prison Outreach ministry, and playing with a variety of nativity sets on our Christmas-lit stage.  Blessings to you during this first week of Advent!