And there was light !

As I drove home down Market Steet I thought I had better swing by Rolling to see if Jamey and Phil had their Lighted Christmas Balls on and they started shining through the trees as I turned onto Greenway. They are beautiful and bright. I love the lights just like a little kid. I will drive by them everytime I leave the neighborhood or return. Let the fun begin.

Lighted Christmas Balls Host Families Coverd Dish Supper

With the Lighted Christmas Balls Party one week away we wanted to get as many of the host families as possible together for a short meeting to tie down loose ends.  Gardner reportred that the hunger problem in NC is showing no signs of letting up.  Second Harvest, which distributes donated food to more than 400 non-profit partner agencies that serve people at risk of hunger and others in need from Boone to Burlington, is experiencing its second consecutive year of unprecedented demand for food.  Last week, WFDD reported that one in six North Carolinians worries about running out of food sometime in the next seven days.  Documented research shows one out of every five children in North Carolina experience food insecurity. 

Sunset Hills Neighborhood is committed to doing something about this.  Jamey and Phil are providing a 2nd food collection trailer at the corner of Rolling and West Greenway North, and can safeguard donated food from the elements and redeliver it to food banks.  John Englar suggested yard signs signs with a simple catch phrase could go a long way to helping connect the experience of enjoying the lighted balls with the bigger purpose of shining a light on the problem of hunger in North Carolina.  Triad sign maker Bravo Signs, who helped sponsor our last two workshops/food drives, will make signage for 2nd food trailer and our new yard signs.  More later.

Jonathan announced that Glenwood Tutoring Program will have their Christmas party December 7, and they'd love us to be part of their effort.  For the last two years, Sunset Hills neighbors worked with the program's tutors and students to make and hang over 50 Lighted Christmas Balls.  Neighborhoods like Glenwood live on life's margins.  Poverty, drugs, and prostitution are in ample supply.  Stability, hope, and joy are scarce.  Glenwood may be on the margins, but it benefits from a huge multiplyer affect: any good done there gets so much bang for the buck.   Just imagine what Greensboro will be like if each student of Glenwood Tutoring Program hangs a Lighted Christmas Ball in their yard 40 years from now, offering stability, hope and joy.  Jonathan will send around a signup memo with some possible dates. 

Everyone signed up for all the working parts of the party.  Despite that the City of Greensboro has offered us an optional "rain date" for the following Sunday, we said if we could take last year's nasty weather, we can take anything.  Besides, our statiscian says, it's rained the last three years and we're overdue for a clear day.  The forecast for next Sunday indicates cold and clear, but that could change.  Stone soup is in the offing again so remember to bring your canned vegatables to add to the pot.   If we have more vegtables than we need, they will be added to the food drive trailer.

As always there was lots of stories and lots of laughter as this is just the start of the season when we all meet new neighbors, get to know neighbors better and make new friends. The Lighted Christmas Balls no longer just Christmas decorations, they are the cord that binds a neighborhood, one more thing that makes living in Sunset Hills so very special.

While we adjourned to the living room to enjoy an open fire, a glass of wine, and friends, Janet and Jeff took over the kitchen and scraped, scrubbed, and washed evey pot, bowl, plate, fork, spoon and glass in sight, and left us with a spotlessly clean kitchen. What a wonderful treat. What a joy. Thank you, guys.

When the going gets tough, the tough hang Lighted Christmas Balls

We had an absolutely wonderful day joining our long time friends Bill and Paulette for lunch (we had yummy lunch by Wendy Cardais - caterer extraordinaire). After lunch we rolled out the table protector covers and started cutting chicken wire right then and there on the dining room table. We gathered in the living room with football playing on the big screen and made the chicken wire balls. I am not 100% sure they believed they would ever look like anything other than a wire 'foot stool' but to the amazement of all (including us) they do finally take shape and when you wrap the lights around them, they suddenly are magical.

Next step take them to the front lawn, put the strings up in the trees, attach those strings and power to the Lighted Christmas Balls - then just at dusk, we hoist them up - you can the lake beyond them and I am sure the boaters can see them from the lake.

Paulette is supervising the whole hanging operation from the porch and by now it is 5 and time for an afternoon glass of wine. Our dearest friend is fighting a very aggressive cancer and we are praying for God to intervene with a miracle and extend her time with all of us and her dear family. The day was special and full of joy.

Bill emailed and said Paulette asked him to leave the them on all night, in case she wakes up and wants to see them.  We understand that fully. We leave ours on all night and when I get up in the middle of the night, I always peek out the upstairs window.

"The life light blazed out of the darkness and the darkness couldn't put it out." John 1:3 The Message

FAQ - Lighted Christmas Balls

Why are the Lighted Christmas Balls so important to you? It has been a great neighborhood project for Sunset Hills. We know more neighbors than we ever would under 'normal circumstances.'  Lighted Christmas Balls are beautiful (in the dark), they encourage the old, thrill the young, amaze all in between. We have laughed with our neighbors and family and spent hours of enjoyment putting them up, keeping them lit, and eventually taking them down for another season.

What have you enjoyed most as this tradition has continued? We love that they are used in the spirit of increasing fun, joy, hope, beauty, and encouragement. We like to help people make them. We are touched that the regional cancer center in Greensboro sends their cancer patients, who have just recieved chemo, radiation or other therapy, to our neighborhood for an extra dose of hope. Many of the retirement communities in the area drive their little buses through the neighborhood to delight their residents. And finally - people who want to show gratitude to the neighborhood for the lights leave canned food in a trailer in front of our home and other collection points in the neighborhood. Those canned goods are then taken to 2nd Harvest Food Bank and Urban Ministry in Greensboro. Last year we collected close to 2 tons of food thanks to the generosity of those driving through. This year we hope to double that amount.

Do you care that other neighborhoods have also done this? We love that most of all, we would love to see them all over the city, county, state and beyond.

What else is fun about them? The emails and phone calls we receive from as far west as California, as far south as Florida, and as far north as the UP of Michigan. We have put those letters on this blog, look around for them with their photos. This week we received a box from a family in Laurel Mississippi who sent over some equipment and new ideas about getting the balls installed and getting electricity to them. We can't wait to share them with you at this year's workshop.

The photo of Jonathan with the box of goodies from Mississippi is shown above.

This Hope's for you

David Pike was a champion.  A champion for his family, his friends, especially his cancer fighting friends, for his fellow Rotarians, for life, and for Christ.

No stranger to the Moses Cone Regional Cancer Center, David gave life to everyone he met: fellow cancer patients, nurses, doctors, even those in waiting rooms. Never a complainer...always an encourager, abundantly generous in hope.

Not long before David went to be with God, he said, "You'll never know what a ministry of encouragement your neighborhood is to everyone at the cancer center. Patients, nurses, doctors, and visitors, that's all they talk about. Promise me you'll teach them to make the Lighted Christmas Balls."

David and his cancer fighting friends encouraged everyone at the Regional Cancer Center, after chemo therapy, to drive down Ridgeway Drive into the land of wonder, where each and every Lighted Christmas Ball is transformed into a beacon of hope, in a world long on suffering and short on hope.

We told David and Patricia and Kris and Roman that we'd keep David's light on, seven days a week, twenty four hours a day, in memory of him and every person fighting cancer.  (David's light is a gigantic Lighted Christmas Ball with 1,400 mini Christmas lights wrapped around a 36" diameter sphere.)

So if you're reading this, and you or someone you know is fighting cancer, this Symbol of Hope stays lit, day and night, for you.

This image taken 12/28/2009 just before midnight without a tripod

This image taken after the big snowstorm of March 1, 2009

"God, the one and only— I'll wait as long as he says. Everything I hope for comes from him, so why not? He's solid rock under my feet, breathing room for my soul, An impregnable castle: I'm set for life." Psalm 62:5; The Message

Food Drive totals

Friends of Lighted Christmas Balls donated 3,729 pounds of non-perishable food during December 2008; this is 753 pounds, or 25%, over 2007's total!

Twin brothers from different mothers

Atmore News (AL) contributing writer Bonnie Bartel Latino keeps her eyes open, at least on one side. And when she sees something that needs just a little more looking into, well, she starts connecting the dots...or in this case, the gumdrops, and before she knows it, there's a story. Though she's never "seen" Sunset Hills' Lighted Christmas Balls per se, what she "saw" through the eyes of Master-At-Arms 1st Class Fritz Currie, United States Navy, Reserves, was as clear as if she had been on Ridgeway Drive herself. Currie, it turns out, touched down in Greensboro to see friends (Sunset Hills' Blake and Robin Conklin), enroute to Atmore, AL from the Middle East, and got bitten by the Lighted Christmas Balls. Fritz "took" the Lighted Christmas Balls to his native hometown, where they grace 305 S. Pensacola Avenue. I can't wait to meet him. He can't wait to light up the whole town.

Treat yourself and read Bonnie's feature article which was printed in the Atmore News New Year's Eve edition.

We'd love to hear from you, in person, email, or comment box below...

Lighted Christmas Balls on Current TV

fcproducer's producer/editor andy coon and and blake faucette, dp, came to see us Christmas Eve with their video cams, spirits of adventure, and filmed this treasure of a documentary (with no rehearsals or retakes). Truly they captured the spirit of Christmas, but hearing their stories about how the Lighted Christmas Balls brighten their lives was a real gift. Thanks Andy (and Blake), for sharing your gifts and talents, and for spreading the Lighted Christmas Balls.



enjoy it, share it, and tell the folks at current tv how you like it.

if you haven't already seen it, check out video andy made in 2006 of the Lighted Christmas Balls.