Update Tuesday-Peace

This story actually begins months ago, back in the fall toward the beginning of the school year.  One morning I received a text from a student in Calgary.  She is part of a student ministry that my colleague Paul Johnson works with.  She informed me that while on a trip to China over the summer she had met a Chinease student named Roy.  As it turned out Roy would be coming to Hamilton to study at an international college.  She asked if I could connect with him.  

Fast forward to last Wednesday, and Roy arrived on my front  porch with four other friends and bags of groceries.  They had come to make dumplings (from scratch!) for our Fellowship gathering that evening.  Roy, who had been coming to Fellowship when studies were not too heavy, but who I was afraid was having trouble making connections being the only Mandarin speaker, seems to have found a place with us.  Not only that, but he is proving to be a real Person of Peace.

It seems fitting that as a Person of Peace begins to emerge, that our advent lesson for the evening would be Peace.  We looked closely at Peace as it relates to Christ and Christmas.  We looked at the Peace offered through Christ-Peace with God, Peace within from God, and Peace with others.  We continued our international focus by working together on a Haiku poem for peace as well as having two of our Japanese members teach us how to make oragami Peace Crane ornaments for our Christmas tree.  

It has been a great two weeks studying advent themes and watching people getting involved in a more in depth and intentional way.  I am really looking forward to this week's Fellowship meetings!