I found this darling book pictured above at a thrift store last winter. For only $4! It’s so lovely. A pre-Christmas gift! God knew I wanted the sheet music for some Christmas songs that I don’t already have in the Reader’s Digest Merry Christmas Songbook, which I got for my 16th birthday, like Silver Bells and Mary’s Lullaby. Both those songs are in this book! It is full of songs, stories, poems, and suggested family tradition activities. This book is also a countdown to Christmas, an advent, to start on December 1. So, each night when we light a candle from our Immanuel Wreath and talk about that name of Christ, we read a story if there’s one, for that day, from this book. The book also has a craft or recipe for each day but I never do those, LOL, because I just don’t have the time. I’m just not in a season of life to do a lot of crafts and recipes. I got it for the songs and the stories. It was only this past week when I pulled it out to use when lighting the wreath’s candle that I noticed “Hey this book has cool conversation starter/ journaling questions!” Maybe one of these days I will start using them. God knows that I love good discussion/journal questions. (I have a bunch curated here, thanks to Jennifer Flanders of flandersfamily.info.) I wish I had noticed the ones in this book sooner and started using them on December 1. I think it would be so meaningful to have a special Christmas Family Conversations Journal where I ask these same questions every year to my children, via text to the ones out of the nest, and via dinnertime, for the ones still at home, and recorded their answers in that dedicated Journal. How cool would that be, to go back and see how their answers change. I guess it’s never too late to start. Yes indeed, this beautiful book is one of my many pre-Christmas gifts that I’ve been enjoying. Sometimes I go to the thrift store, and come out with nothing, and sometimes, like when I bought this book, I go in, and there’s this amazing item that is just shouting out to me to pick it up and buy it, figuratively saying, “God put me in your path for you to buy me and take home and use. Here you go, enjoy!” Such was the case with that book, as well as this other book shown below. I also found it thrifting, and it’s another Christmas Advent book. If we have time, I read the story for the night from this book too. It focuses on the family tree of Jesus with a Biblical story each night telling of one person from the family tree of Jesus.

Last week my husband and I went car shopping again. Our marriage has witnessed 9 cars being totaled in accidents, thus warranting a replacement, so we have a lot of car shopping experience. (Names of the guilty are being kept secret, LOL.) I hope we don’t have to do this again for a long, long time. As we drove to a look at a car, I realized the seller lives within three miles or so of where I lived from ages 5-8. So, when we borrowed the car to test drive it, we drove past my childhood home. It looked different but the same. It’s hard to describe. It was literally a trip down memory lane. Memories were flooding back. Remember Big Wheels? I could see me at 5 years old riding a Big Wheel down the hill, on the sidewalk, into my driveway, then walking up the hill to start over. I can still name at least half a dozen family names from this neighborhood. I just wonder where all these families are now. Do any of them still live there? I guess that is what Facebook is for. Everything is so much smaller than it used to be. Anyway, when we were driving back to the owner’s home, I was driving and couldn’t get the brakes to work. It was scary! I was putting my foot on the brake, but the car wasn’t stopping. I ran a red light and saw a car coming about to hit us. Fortunately, and I believe it was angels helping, I was guided with enough presence of mind to swerve and miss the car. Whew!!! I am so grateful!!! Needless to say, we didn’t buy that car! We bought a different car later that day. Yay!!! I just got an hour of time back each day, from not having to drive and pick my husband up from the train station each day, which allowed me to have a car to do mom errands. So that’s another pre-Christmas miracle for the week, that I was saved from a major car accident. I am feeling so blessed!

Then it just so happened that one of my brothers, who lives in Virginia currently, but often lives overseas like in Korea or China, happened to fly into town Sunday morning. This was positively providential! Only God knew how to do this, and He arranged it. Sunday night, after celebrating my mom’s birthday with a dinner at my sister’s home, we took my brother to a fireside. We went to hear the couple whose story is told in this book below. In the book, the couple tell their story about escaping from Communist North Korea.

My brother served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in South Korea so I knew he would enjoy hearing this couple share. What are the chances that he would come when I just happened to have an invite from my friend Angie Law to come to this fireside? He only comes to visit once, sometimes twice a year, and it just happened to be this time. Only God knew these details ahead of time and could arrange it so perfectly. So that’s another pre-Christmas miracle.

The Kims escaped from North Korea, two years apart. The husband escaped in 2009, the wife in 2011. Their story is amazing! They now live in Utah. They say they are so grateful for hot water, electricity, and all these material blessings they have here in the States, 24/7. Just hearing them speak makes me feel so grateful too for all of my material and spiritual blessings. Now I want to read their book! They have seen the atrocities of living under a Communist government. Mr. Kim said that when he was a child, his neighbors got taken away by the police for having church in their home. This was when Mr. Kim first learned about God, when his boss told him why the neighbors were taken away. The idea of a God percolated in his brain for months. He started believing in God and praying, asking for help that his wife would be able to escape as he did. There’s a lot more to their story so you will have to go buy the book like I’m going to. I’m just so grateful for the Kims and other people like them who have set such a great example of following God’s light.

Those are a few pre-Christmas gifts/miracles I’ve enjoyed lately. I’d love to hear of any you’ve received. Please comment in the comments section below.