2012 Christmas Concert

On Sunday, Dec. 2nd, at 2:00pm Haidee and I performed a Christmas concert at Izumi Lutheran Church.  The church members had asked us when we first arrived together back in January, and we were happy to use our love of music for this program.  We sang popular Christmas tunes, Contemporary Christian songs, and Christmas hymns, while sharing the Christmas story from Luke chapter 2.  Our friend, Mieko, joined us on the flute, and Emoto-san from our church narrated the Bible story in Japanese.

We created a bi-lingual program for people to understand the message of the songs.

 One of our English students took these pictures, so we thought we'd share them with you:

It was such a blessing for us to perform together, with an audience consisting of church members, English school students, friends, and others we have met here in Japan!  What a privilege to share the message of Jesus Christ coming as a human being to share God's love with us.  I love these words by Chris Rice (we sang his song, Welcome to Our World, as one of our final pieces in the program).  His poetry really paints the picture of the Christmas story for me:

Welcome to Our World

By Chris Rice

Tears are falling, hearts are breaking

How we need to hear from God

You've been promised, we've been waiting

Welcome, Holy Child

Hope that You don't mind our manger

How I wish we would have known

But long awaited Holy Stranger

Make Yourself at home

Bring Your peace into our violence

Bid our hungry souls be filled

Word now breaking Heaven's silence

Welcome to our world

Fragile finger sent to heal us

Tender brow prepared for thorn

Tiny heart whose blood will save us

Unto us is born

So wrap our injured flesh around you

Breathe our air and walk our sod

Rob our sin and make us holy

Perfect Son of God, Welcome to our world