‘The most wonderful time of the year.’
Certainly, Christmas is a wonderful time of year! At Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch, the Christmas season brings many things — our group homes brightly decorated to reflect the festivity of the season, young people eagerly awaiting visits home and even the annual Christmas cantata in our chapel.
Each year, the young people who live and learn at Boys Ranch, guided by our chapel staff, prepare this dramatic retelling of the events leading up to Jesus’ birth in a Bethlehem stable.
From the breathtaking music to the spoken word, the sound, the lighting and more, it’s amazing to see how each year our young people find new, unique and such creative ways to share a story most of us know so well!
That’s because the faith, hope and love that are central to the Christmas message, while unchanging, touch a different chord inside each person who hears them. For one, it may be Mary’s obedience. For another, it is the wonder of the shepherds’ encounter with the angelic host. And, for others, the idea of a God who would become a baby to share His people’s hopes and fears is truly life-changing.
Our youths’ pasts — and their positive, transformative experiences at Cal Farley’s — motivate them to respond to the faith, hope and love of Christmas in ways that are as unique as the fingerprints on their fingers.
For the young people you’ll read about in this issue, discovering a personal faith was a call to action. Garrett’s faith drives him to service, learning in our chapel program what it will mean to pursue his dream of serving others as a missionary. For Alex, it was a call to restore his lost faith and share that restoration with his peers through baptism.
My team and I are richly blessed to work for such an incredible organization, to put our belief in the promise of these resilient youth into action every day. I hope in these pages you’ll see the gratitude our youth genuinely feel toward you. I hope you’ll see how your belief in our mission is actively changing the lives of young people from across the United States.
Most of all, though, my hope for you this Christmas is that you, too, will know faith, hope and love. Merry Christmas!
