Email: Alicia Weber

Grace and peace to you,

Halloween has passed, and Thanksgiving is on the way. The holiday season has arrived! Lakeview Day School had a series of festivities for the children. The trick-or-treat hour during school on Halloween was fun. They even had a swinging party, complete with Halloween hats and scary cupcakes!

The church is also gearing up for an eventful month. Our second “Sunset Sundays on Canal Blvd” performance is coming up, and I’m working hard on the posters and publicity for it. I’m becoming more computer-savvy every day.

This month, I will be taking another workshop rotation for Sunday school. Our new theme will be “Christmas: a Gospel Comparison.” I’ll be leading the storytelling workshop by interacting with the children as Mary, mother of Jesus, and portraying her view on His birth. I’m very excited! Another source of pride for me are the Sunday school rooms themselves. I’ve become quite the handy-dandy organizer/cleaner, and the rooms look much better than when I arrived in September. My coworker Maura and I have been designing the Sunday school curriculum, and the first week in November was the trial of a lesson entirely generated by us. We look forward to creating many future lessons.

In preschool, the older children have been talking about what they’re thankful for. I’m grateful for the bike I ride home from work almost every day. Without it, I would be completely dependent on others and most likely a source of frustration because of the distance between work and home. I’m thankful for my downstairs neighbor, Susan, who is currently fighting a difficult personal battle. She inspires me and reminds me, through her strength and faith, that God holds everything in His hand even when things fall to pieces. I’m grateful for the stories so many people have shared with me about life here. For example, a woman called the church, thinking it was the preschool, and told me about her family’s history at the school, that they had just returned home for good since Katrina, and how happy she was that a small piece of her past still stood. And I’m thankful for the love and help from those around me everyday—usually in the form of free dinner! This is only the tip of my things-to-be-thankful-for iceberg.

I’ve included some information about the Christmas project I’ve been seeking out. “Project Homecoming” has presented me with two options: “Homes for Christmas” and “Adopt a Home.” The point person for these programs is a man by the name of Richard Maag, who works for Project Homecoming. He’s a wonderful resource for those who want to commit and have some deep questions I can't answer.

Unless there are individuals or churches that wish to do something by themselves, which is also fine, I propose that those of you supporting me come together to do this. I feel that we will be better able to pool our resources to do the most good and that it will create a bond between congregations that may not already exist. Please, I humbly ask you to pray about this. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know you were carrying out Christ’s command to love your neighbor during the time when we celebrate His birth?

With Love in Christ,

Alicia Weber

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