Children of the World Choir

Today marks the beginning of the Mission's Week at our church. One of the many things I love about Cypress Church is it's heart for missions. As a church we support missionaries all over the world and are definitely very mission minded.

Last year we had a worship team fly in from Hawaii which I hear was an amazing night (I was at Sam's step-mom's funeral so I wasn't there to witness it first hand). This year, we were blessed to have the Children of the World Choir visiting our church. It was amazing. First of all, some of the families in our church opened up their homes to host these children (and the chaperones). I wish we could have but one of the guidelines was two parents in the home and since Sam is gone that instantly counted me out. It was probably for the better given how much stress we've been under, but it would have been so cool for Nathaniel to be able to experience another culture like that.

When we walked into the service today there was about 15 young children on stage singing and dancing and truly praising the Lord. Tears instantly sprung to my eyes because it was just so beautiful. Then their stories began to unfold. They shared with us how all of the children on stage were orphans, either orphaned because of the AIDS epidemic in Africa or simply abandoned by their parents. They were all from Uganda (which is a land terrorized by the Lord's Army, an army led by a man who kidnaps young children and forces them to fight in tribal warfare) and all were sponsored by Americans. To see these little children sing and dance and watch the joy shining from their eyes was amazing. Check out this video to get an idea of what worship was like for us this morning.




After church Nathaniel wanted to go see the kids, so we went over to some of them and they all kept touching Nathaniel's hair (which was cute) and kept hugging Nathaniel. My normal socialite turned into a shy guy though and just looked at the ground. Poor boy. He thought it was cool though (the singing and dancing).

On a funny note, I think Nathaniel is going to be a performer when he gets older. He's gone to a couple of live shows this week (Seussical, Jr. and then worship this morning) and he is enamored. He also then points to the stage after it's over and wants to go on stage to sing as well. He has pulled out his microphone from his room and stands in front of me singing, dancing and taking a bow, expecting applause. Heaven help me, this kid takes after his mommy!