COMING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
by Virelle Kidder

My mother had remarkable zeal for Christmas. Weeks in advance, she would come home from teaching school and bake late into the night. I helped clean the house and decorate the tree while my older brother Roger wired the house with Christmas lights, transforming our humble red house into a place of magical beauty. Following the church candlelight service, a crowd of happy people crunched through the snow to our house for cocoa and cookies.

We were, like many, quite alone in the years after my father left. Our Christmas open house was my mother’s supreme effort to make us feel complete. It almost worked.

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Life Beautiful
by Margaret McSweeney

During a quiet moment after Thanksgiving, I started reading my parents’ stack of love letters that I recently found in a storage box. As a Christmas gift to you, I would like to share my father’s words to my mother written to her during Christmas 1949. This incredible "hug from heaven" has been a tangible affirmation that Pearl Girls has true meaning and great worth for women throughout the world. I pray that God will continue to bless this ministry and outreach. May we all realize that the grit in our lives can be transformed into grace through the love of God.

This is what I found written on a tiny folded card inscribed with "Christmas Greetings" on the front:

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Too Precious to Wear
by Sarah Sundin

One Christmas when my mother was a girl, she received a string of pearls from her father. Since her parents were divorced-an unusual situation in the 1950s-she treasured the pearls as a sign of her father’s love. When he passed away her senior year in high school, the pearls took on even greater significance.

When I was growing up, my mother talked often about the pearls, but my sister and I never saw them. Mom kept them safe in their silk-lined velvet box tucked in her jewelry box. For dressy occasions, she wore other nice jewelry, but never the pearls.

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ENGAGING FATHER CHRISTMAS
by Robin Jones Gunn

Miranda Carson has just returned to England to spend Christmas with her Scottish boyfriend, Ian, and his family, who manages a tea shop in a small town in the English country-side. But Ian is running late meeting Miranda at the airport, and the first person Miranda sees is her former boyfriend, Josh. After a few minutes spent catching up, Josh goes his way, and Ian arrives, whisking Miranda off to…the hospital, where his dad had just been admitted with a heart attack.

While visiting with Ian’s mother in the tea shop, Miranda’s deceased father’s wife shows up, and Miranda spends a few minutes talking with her, hoping that the family matriarch will make her welcome. But Margaret is as cold and stand-offish as ever, making Miranda wonder if she will ever truly be welcomed as her father’s daughter, a member of the family. Still, her brother Edward does extend some effort, and Miranda loves Edward’s two children, Julia and Mark.

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Elisabeth, describe yourself for our visitors.

I live with my husband, Kevin, and middle-school children, Sara and Jack, in Illinois .  I am the author of He Is Just That Into You, a collection of essays about God’s faithfulness and love; the devotionals, In Search of Calm and Calm in My Chaos; and the monthly column, “Moments for Mom”.  I am on the Advisory Team of MOPS’ MomSense magazine.  After ten years of leading Women’s Ministry and four years on staff at Christ Community Church , I now devote my time to speaking and writing, along with my passions of social justice and AIDS, which I engage in through my connections with Open Door Clinic and my church’s partnerships in Africa.

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Check out the latest book release from critically acclaimed author, Athol Dickson. A review will be posted soon!

Seattle, WA – Critically acclaimed author, Athol Dickson’s writing has been favorably compared to the work of Octavia Butler (Publisher’s Weekly), Daphne du Maurier (Cindy Crosby, Christianity Today fiction critic) and Flannery O’Connor (The New York Times).

Although a work of fiction, Athol’s LOST MISSION, touches on some of the hot-button issues being discussed in the media today! Dickson explores

1) The personal costs of our immigration policies, asking difficult questions about our ethical and moral obligations as Americans and as Christians.

2) It forces readers to consider the logical end result of the spiritual decisions being made by most Americans today, which are slowly driving American into a post-Christian era. 3) LOST MISSION digs deep into current debate within the American church between the emergent movement and the traditional evangelical community, exposing strengths and weaknesses in both ways of "doing" Christianity.

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J.M., describe yourself for our visitors—hobbies, favorite music, ministries

I love to garden and do crafts. Last summer I started scrapbooking, but I’ve been too busy to work on my projects this winter, and it’s driving me crazy! I’m also very interested in interior decoration and could happily make a career of it. I’d redo my house every other year if I could afford it. Needless to say, HGTV is one of my favorite channels! And I love to travel.

I like a fairly wide range of music, from classical to rock. Anything by George Gershwin, Debussy, Chopin, Mozart, and Beethoven is high on my list of favorite listening. Being a child of the 60s, I’m a big fan of some of the music from that era and through the 70s and 80s. Particular favorites are Simon and Garfunkel, John Denver, Neil Diamond, the Mamas and the Papas, the Fifth Dimension, the Beetles, and a few others. I also love Enya and David Lanz.

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The Last Word, by Kathy Herman from David C. Cook on Vimeo.

Tammy, describe yourself for our visitors.

When I’m not writing, I ghostwrite and edit books for others (biographies, self-help, business books), I mentor other writers, and I’m a homeschool mom of three tweens. I currently have little time for hobbies, but I’m hopelessly addicted to fiction, I love to bake, craft, and garden. Music—wide variety; I’m especially fond of good movie soundtracks. I have one ministry I enjoy and support—La Esperanza Misión de Niños, The Hope Children’s Mission in beautiful Catemaco, Veracruz, Mexico.

How do you find time to connect with God?

As a family, we read the Bible together every night, and do Bible study during home school hours. Also, I talk to God whenever I need advice or want to tell Him something. No long distance charges, never ending rollover minutes. =)

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