Thank you, Miles. It is good to be back in Auburn. It's a good place here. Did you know that?

Like, it's awesome. And when we pulled up this morning, Courtney looked at the building on the outside. It's awesome.

Then we looked at all the stuff on the inside. We're like, it's beautiful here.

We meet in a government building in Birmingham, Alabama. It's awesome.

Yeah, I'll struck this one and also sitting over there, and I was like, this is going to be

the third year in a row for my family that were going to celebrate Christmas in a new city.

And if God's calling you into something, and you're in a season where it feels like you're shifting and moving, I'm just reminding you, when God moves you, he meets you there, and he's faithful. The thing he's started in you, he'll be faithful to see it through, even in a new city. And when you move to a new city several times, some of you are like, we're military people or we're coaches and whatever. We move all the time. You'll get this. you have to a new city several times some of you're like we're military people or we're coaches and whatever we move all the time you'll get this you have to learn new cultures and rhythms like i was trying to remember what we did for christmas Courtney here last year and i just don't remember much our house if you remember if you've been here before our house had barbed wire behind it it was cool um this a nice house just with barbwire not for safety i don't know what I can keep going, but I'm going to stop. I think we had some lights out front, but not many. We didn't care that much. But this year, our neighborhood in Birmingham, Alabama, man, they are extra. They are, like, every time we drive in, and it's not cohesive. Like, some of you're like, we have a neighborhood where they,

like, do our lights for us, and every light is white and it's perfect. Our neighborhood's not like that. For Halloween, it was like this massive, everything blown up and scary and wolves and scary stuff all over the place. And we have deer all over the neighborhood. So you're like, is that thing moving? Yes, it is. So it's just, we had to have all these conversations with their kids about like what's spooky

and Halloween versus what is demonic. And like, we're having all these conversations, but now we're in Christmas, and I'm not joking, they add things every single day. Like, I don't even know how they got power to their mailbox. Like, I think they ran conduit under their driveway to get the, it's like ho, ho, ho, right next to Joy, Joy, Joy.

And it's got the big blowups that during the day, you know what they do?

They go down and look like trashed. But it's just our neighborhood and we're barely... We don't even have bushes. Like, we bought bushes, but they hadn't grown. They're like that big. So our kids are like, why don't we have the Christmas season? I'm like, stop it. Look at the neighbors stuff.

Pay their power bill.

Hey, but that's not the

weirdest part. If you've ever been to Homewood, Alabama, where our church meets at Christmas

time, that's where I'm really trying to learn things and figure things out. Did you know they have

a tradition in Homewood, I think some other parts of Birmingham, where they put their Christmas trees in their front yards? Have you seen this? You buy Christmas

trees, you pay your $80, $140, whatever it is, and you put your Christmas tree that's cut down

somewhere else in nature, and then you plant it in your front yards and you put lights on it. Have you

seen this? It's weird.

But that's the tradition that we're in in Hoover, I mean at Homewood, Alabama, it's just like, what's going on here? Why are all these people crazy? And if you don't do it, you are kicked out the community, which is like some churches somewhere. But like, it's this weird thing that we're trying to figure out. And I'm like, that's such a bizarre way to celebrate Advent. Like the ho-ho-hoes and the blow-ups

Anna Claus and the blow-up Anna Claus and the blow-up Frosty

the Snowman. Like it's just a weird kind of layup for like, this is about us anticipating Jesus.

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