I was sitting in church and the idea of making a Christmas video came to me. I immediately knew that I have to use my favorite Christmas song, This Baby by Steven Curtis Chapman. At first, I thought I would use photos of Derrick (my newest nephew) as the baby star, and photos of Timothy (my sort-of-godbrother) as the boy star of the video. But as I thought of it, I couldn’t figure out how I can make random photos fit together to form a Christmas theme. Aside from that, a video consisting of numerous photos of one baby is only interesting to the baby’s parents and grandparents, not very exciting for the rest of us. In the end, I decided to set that idea aside. My alternative idea was to use photos of missionaries and their work.

One time, I was with a group of friends from church, and one of the girls mentioned that she just came back from a missions conference and that Heidi Baker spoke at that conference. Another girl quickly responded in awe that Heidi Baker was at that conference. And I was sitting there wondering, “Who in the world is Heidi Baker?” I later found out that she and her husband are missionaries in Mozambique. Their ministry is called Iris Ministries and their website has numerous photos. So that’s where I went for the photos to form my Christmas theme video.

I remember once, a friend mentioned that she couldn’t imagine a Christmas without snow. When I told her that half the world “celebrates” Christmas without snow, that was like an “aha-duh” moment for her! I guess when you’re living in a first world country surrounded by images of traditions, gifts, evergreens, wreaths, poinsettias and carols, you don’t really think of what Christmas is like for the rest of the world. As I was working on this video and examining the photos, I realized that I too don’t know what Christmas is like for half the people of this world.