dedication

We had Daniel dedicated in church last Sunday (a week ago).  We would ordinarily have waited, but we found out right after we got home that our beloved pastor is leaving to follow a God-sent opportunity in another state, and we wanted to have the dedication done by someone that we have a relationship with.  I explained to Daniel that we were going to promise to teach him about Jesus and to ask Jesus to help us do a good job of raising him, and that the other people in the church were going to promise to help us do that.  I said that we would all go up front and our church friend (I wasn't sure what the word for pastor was, and didn't have my dictionary handy) would talk for a while and then pray for us.  Daniel seemed to feel comfortable being up front (he has had lots of experience being in front of an audience, with his singing background!).  He did whisper to me a few times to ask what our pastor was saying, and I had to keep telling him to ask me later, since I wanted to be able to listen to it in the first place!  Our pastor talked about how we believe that God has put our family together, and how God will continue to be with us as a family.  Our church always uses a rose at child dedications, which they give to the family afterwards.  Daniel's rose was white because, our pastor said, he is pure and innocent in God's sight.  It was encouraging to us to be reminded of these things that we believe.  At the end of the ceremony our pastor started to hand the rose to us, and Daniel cracked everybody up by exclaiming (in Chinese), "That's mine!!" and stepping forward to take it.  :-)  I guess it's now a family tradition for our children to grab something when they're dedicated.  At Esther's dedication, she tried to grab the pastor's microphone!  Shy, our children are not.  :-)