I want to start off by wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and blessed New Year! I love the Christmas season; it's really my favorite holiday. I enjoy seeing and spending time with my family. I love all the lights and decorations. My wife Dianne, along with our kids and grandkids, makes Christmas cookies every year (of course they're all growing up now, so I don't how much longer they'll be helping), and trust me folks, I am a cookie monster! I even like the shopping part of the Christmas season, but most of all I love the reason that we celebrate Christmas. I heard an atheist say on the radio the other day that Christmas was a secular holiday, and it was all about Santa, decorations, lights and hype. I have to agree that Christmas has defiantly turned into a bunch of hype, but here's where we disagree. Folks, Jesus is the reason we celebrate Christmas, and we must never forget that. It's all about celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I certainly don't see anything wrong with all the other stuff that we do at Christmas time, but we should never forget why we celebrate it in the first place.
We had a great month in November and had the opportunity to see a lot decisions made at the altars. I love to see the Holy Spirit move among His people! We also had a lot of people signing up to sponsor our Compassion Kids. Many of you know that we teamed up with Compassion International about 3 years ago to help sponsor poverty-stricken kids in third world countries around the world. We love working with this organization because they not only help these kids through your sponsorship by providing them food, clothing, medical attention, and education, but they also offer them Jesus Christ. They teach them that through Jesus Christ they can have hope and eternal life. Hundreds of thousands of these kids come to know Jesus as their Savior every year. Paul's Journey loves being a part of that kind of mission outreach!
Dianne and I are also staying real busy at our radio station 102.7 KTXJ in Jasper, TX. This is another great ministry opportunity to which God has called us, and we're watching it grow every day. We have a large listening area, but if you don't live in an area where you can pick it up on the radio, just go to www.1027ktxj.com and listen live right over the web. If you love Southern Gospel music you're going to love KTXJ.
I'm sorry to have to say that our Christmas DVD is still in production. Those of you that have pre-ordered your copy, I want you to know that we will send your copy to you as soon as we can, and I do apologize. Again, I am truly sorry for the delay and we appreciate your patience.
We are now booking dates for 2012 and we would love to sing at your church or next promoted concert. So if we've never been to your church, or we have been but it's been a while since we were there, please give us a call and let's book a date for next year.
As always, please pray for our country, the leaders of our country, and our military, and please pray for the ministry of Paul's Journey daily. Don't forget to send us your prayer requests. We can't pray for you if we don't know what your needs are.
Until next month, God bless you all!
Rod
