Christmas Village in Review

I’m blogging over at Church of the Resurrection today, sharing the tip of the iceberg of the craziness that was Christmas Village. The post focuses on the missions aspect of the Village, but much of my Christmas Village time was in the  days and weeks before, setting up and taking down, rounding up and organizing volunteers, and making sure the cookies were plentiful and the hot chocolate kept flowing. 

Doesn't look like a cafeteria, does it?

I shared at Rez the amount of money we raised, but here are some more numbers:

116 shoppers (people who donated gifts to missionaries)
70 volunteers (probably more, actually) working hard behind the scenes
50 live Christmas trees
12 groups of entertainers — singers and dancers, mostly, but also an exotic petting zoo and a pen of puppies
10 hours of Christmas Festival
8 countries represented -- more about this at RezBlog
7 hours of set up
2 hours of take down
1 break in the evening for the Christmas Pageant

Blade was invaluable; he helped run errands with me all day and made sure I got something to eat besides cookies.

I slept most of the following day, the whole thing was so exhausting, but it was all totally worth it.