Happy New Year! I know it's been a couple weeks now, but I just got some great pictures of our New Hope kids' Christmas Pageant all assembled in a gallery on our web site. Click here to go to our photos page, then click on the Christmas Pageant link.
After a two-month broken-arm-related hiatus, Dewey Bertolini has posted a few new items on his Israel Connection blog. Click here to check it out!
To be honest, I've never been a big fan of "O Little Town of Bethlehem." The chromatic melody always seemed a little schmaltzy to me, and who wants to sing a song to a town anyway? But this year I looked at all four stanzas for the first time in a while. I'm still not crazy about the tune, but boy, the lyrics are just great. Why don't you "read them again for the first time":
New Hope Christian Fellowship has a new phone number! You can now call our office at (503) 472-1144 (easy to remember)!
We will be having an all-church Christmas Caroling night this Sunday evening at 6:00 p.m. We'll meet at the church and sing to the folks in our new neighborhood, and then we'll thaw out with some hot cocoa and cider! Bring some warm clothes and an umbrella--it may get wet for us out there, but we'll just think hearty, Northwestern thoughts! :)
I've been hearing a great new Christmas song on the radio lately called How Many Kings? by a Canadian group called Downhere. it took me a while to find any details about it online, but I finally found it and thought I'd share it with you!
Well, the first 100 of our new chairs were delivered today! I can personally confirm that they are indeed comfy, and though I didn't test their durability with a sledge hammer (like the manufacturer does on their web site), they appear to be quite sturdy and handsome!
As I mentioned, these are just the first 100, and we plan to order 150 more once we have the money donated. So it's not too late to get in on the chair-a-thon! According to our chart we've "sponsored" 115 chairs, so we still need gifts for 135 more (they are $45 each). You can donate on Sunday morning (look for the display near the offering box) or contact us through the web site for other options.
For those of you planning to buy presents for kids this month, I ran across this intriguing recommendation.
The choirs at Linfield are performing a Christmas Concert this Sunday, December 2nd, at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free! The concert is in Melrose Hall, which is in the front of the campus (click here for a map of the college).
A lot of people have been working very hard to get our new building ready for this Sunday! They've been building walls, painting, fixing lights, setting up chairs, etc. every day. Below are some pictures I took a couple days ago. Bob Schuetz (who isn't pictured but has been working a lot!) also took some pictures this week, and they are included on our web site's photo gallery titled New Hope's New Look.
Our first worship service in the new building is this Sunday--but you can begin your "worship service" a day earlier! Join other New Hopers on Saturday morning, 9:30 a.m. at 3rd and Kirby in cleaning up the property to get ready for church!
As a movie fan I've been interested to read some articles about The Golden Compass which opens in theaters December 7th. My family saw an impressive trailer for the film last week when we went to see Enchanted together (which we enjoyed very much, by the way). 
Our website is back up and running, so you can once again...
Our main chair setter uppers were Thomas Christian, Jeff Keikkala and Steve Rotarius (and of course others helped along the way). They were as consistent as sunrises. I can even remember a couple times when Thomas was too sick to come to church, but still came bright and early to make sure the set-up got done and then went back home to bed. Wow! Thanks, guys. I also saw Josh Kanable helping a lot with tear-down after church, and there were a few ladies who did lots of lunch time vacuuming, including Jennifer Keikkala, Linda Anderson, Joann Dorn and Rebecca Bertolini.
The whole Rotarius family was faithful to not only bring the equipment trailer every week, but also to unload it in the morning and load it up again in the afternoon (and most of them wore high heels as they did it)!
Dustin and Beth driving from Salem every Sunday to set up the drums and help with other preparations.
The fact is, all these folks and many more are a constant encouragement in the way they have pitched in to make our worship gatherings work. Naturally, there will still be cleaning, chair-moving, etc. to do in our new building every week, and I am confident that these folks and others will continue to be faithful. But as we close this first chapter of our Sunday meetings, I just want to say Thanks, everybody, for helping to make our nomadic first year work so smoothly. We all appreciate your service to the Lord and His church!
In the meantime, this is a lousy week to not have our site running, because we are changing our Sunday morning worship time and location this Sunday! Fortunately, you're checking the New Hope Connection 
Blog (yeay!), so here's a reminder:
The salesman explained, "When I got posted in the Middle East, I was very sure to make a good sales pitch as our product was virtually unknown there. I didn't know to speak Arabic, so I planned to convey the message through 3 posters. My first poster was a man crawling through the hot desert sand, totally exhausted and panting. Second, the man is drinking our soft drink and third, our man is now totally refreshed. Then these posters were pasted all over the place" 
I just read a terrific article by Ray Comfort that talks about an exchange he had with some Jehovah's Witnesses at his door. The whole article is definitely worth taking in, but in the middle there's a good, clear quote that I wanted to share:
Martin Rinkart, a Lutheran minister, was in Eilenburg, Saxony, during the Thirty Years’ War. The walled city of Eilenburg saw a steady stream of refugees pour through its gates. The Swedish army surrounded the city, and famine and plague were rampant. Eight hundred homes were destroyed, and the people began to perish. There was a tremendous strain on the pastors who had to conduct dozens of funerals daily. Finally, the pastors, too, succumbed, and Rinkart was the only one left—doing 50 funerals a day. When the Swedes demanded a huge ransom, Rinkart left the safety of the walls to plead for mercy. The Swedish commander, impressed by his faith and courage, lowered his demands. Soon afterward, the Thirty Years’ War ended, and Rinkart wrote this hymn for a grand celebration service. It is a testament to his faith that, after such misery, he was able to write a hymn of abiding trust and gratitude toward God.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Wouldn't you know it? The best company for providing such chairs is called (ta-da!) Bertolini Sanctuary Seating. No, there's no relation. You can visit their web site to see what they're about--the most entertaining part of the site is watching a video of a guy futilely pounding a chair with a sledgehammer!
Good chairs don't come cheap, of course. With the shipping, each chair costs $45.00 and we plan to purchase 250 of them. That totals to $11,250 which would wipe out our reserves. So we've ordered 100 of the chairs which we expect to deliver around December 5th, and as the finances come in we will order the remaining 150 seats.
And speak- ing of finances coming in...
