Families are invited to join with other families across the diocese in a fun and creative Advent project to help prepare your hearts and homes for Christmas! A Jesse Tree is sort of like an Advent calendar – each day through Advent you read a bible story and add an ornament representing that symbol to your Jesse Tree (you can read more about it here.) The stories trace the story of Jesus’s family through scripture, bringing you right to the birth of Jesus.
Our Jesse Tree Project will connect up to 24 families to one another as they journey through Advent together with their Jesse Trees. Each participating family will get crafty and create 24 copies of one of the ornaments, and send them into the Synod Office. The ornaments will be packaged up and redistributed so that each family gets one for each day. All of the families will be invited to hop on a zoom call together at the start of Advent (on November 30th, time TBA) to kick things off, and then again for a wrap up around Epiphany.
You don't have to be super artsy or creative to be part of this - we'll send along some paper templates of ornaments and you can take it from there. You could do something as simple as colouirng the ornaments, cutting them out and putting them on a string, or as elaborate as you'd like. We want this to be a fun and engaging thing for your family - not for it to feel like an overwhelming undertaking!
We’ve received a generous grant from the Growth for Ministry Fund which will cover the cost of prepaid shipping boxes and some craft supplies for all participating families, so there is no cost to participate in this!
Of all of the things that impact faith formation through childhood and adolescence, practicing faith at home is the one that has the biggest impact, and we hope that this project will help families do just that, and help them dig deeper into stories of our faith and all that Christmas means.
Families can register now to be part of this project, or can get in touch with Allie at youthandfamily@nspeidiocese.ca or (902) 789 3481 if you have any questions!