A Night of Investigating Christmas & Exchanging Gifts
For our end-of-year Bible study, we filled the night with a nice meal, a special talk unwrapping the case for Christmas, a panel, Christmas carols, photo booths, our usual ramped up Gift Exchange—and special snowflakes.
As the semester comes to a close, we decided to make the most of our final official Bible study of the year. After a warm fried chicken dinner, John gave a special called the Case for Christmas—based off of material from Lee Strobel’s book of the same name. We learned how there’s actually historical evidence for the birth of Jesus and that the greatest gift of all is Jesus, as he came down to save us all from our sins.
Before we dived into our annual Christmas gift exchange, we listened to a panel of juniors and seniors, who shared different steps of faith they made during the year. It was encouraging to hear how God has prompted them to do more for the gospel despite the fears and uncertainties of life.
In the downtime, people also looked around at different Food for Thought booths, which visualize four main topics explained in Course 101, spread across the SAC Ballroom. Later, the band came up, so we could all sing joyous Christmas carols together.
For our special Gift Exchange, planned out by the senior class, we formed a HUGE circle around the edges of the ballroom and set up all the gifts in the center. Starting with the oldest, each class ran for the gift they’ve been eyeing on all night. Then, everyone unwrapped their gifts at once, revealing a mix of joyful, surprised, and confused faces.
Through a system of calling out various identity and game cards each person had on-hand, the gifts traveled all over the room, switching between different people. Classes also battled against each other during challenges like, paper skiing, sleeping bag sledding, and guess the song games.
As for the identity cards, Rudolphs got to hand over antlers and a bright red nose to whoever they wanted—and Pastor John was the very first pick! Elsa was able to ‘freeze’ anyone with the gift they had for the rest of the night. And unbeknownst to the rest of us, the Jack Frosts were going around taking selfies with as many people as possible throughout the whole TFN—ending with a winning number of 31 selfies! And finally, the special snowflakes were gifted with a dazzling video displaying the message, “You are a special snowflake.” Aww.
Once the gifts were done exchanging, each class took photo booth pictures together to finish off the night!
