My Life

Our advent activity tonight was to go do the Bethlehem Walk. A local church has done this the last eleven years (we've been before several years ago). You go through in groups as a family, with a guide (one of the church members), traveling to Bethlehem for the census. Before you go out they give you a slip of paper with your name, occupation (if you have one), and family information. [As a side note, Matthew's was pretty funny! His name was Caleb (one of his middle names) and he was the son of Matthew. ;)]

So you start out on the walk and soldiers stop you. They ask your name, make the group travel properly ("...women in back..men in front") and gently harass (since there are children) everyone. You visit with the kings who are following the star (who were quite wealthy and modernized with their pop-up tent set up next to their fire..LOL!!!!), see the angels sing, visit with shepherds, visit the tax collector (Kev was in the front of our group and got his paper stamped!), visit little shops in Bethlehem, ask the inn keeper for a room, and visit Joseph and Mary.

A little ways after that they have three crosses set up and the guide shares about why they must be there. Then you meet people who are looking for Jesus' body and around the corner you visit the empty tomb. That is the end and they have cider, hot cocoa and little activities for the kids inside.

All that to share the funniest quote o' the night. ;) We had just passed the crosses and our guide says we were going to hear Jesus speak in the temple (I know..they had a little continunity error going on with people worried about the empty tomb and us on the way to the temple...which never happened..but that's besides the point here..).

The ladies came up worried about finding the body and our guide says, "Well, we're on our way to the temple. We heard he is speaking there."

And since we were SO FREAKING COLD, the girls and I were being silly. I said, quietly, "Yeah...we got this email saying he'd be in the temple."

And Abby says, "Oh yeah, you know Jesus loves His WiFi!!"