THE PRAISE FIESTA 🥳🎵🎶🎸 🎷 🎸🎷

The mid-year praise fiesta is one event that will take place this year in my parish here in Lagos State, Nigeria, and as one of the planning committee members, I am looking forward to this delightful event while putting heads together with my team for its success.

It's interesting to know that we began planning this event in September last year, and that's like nine months into the program. I love the fact that we have enough time as a team to brainstorm on ideas to make the event a success, especially considering the fact that the money involved in running this program is huge. We are still looking at inviting gospel artists, but then it dawned on me that these artists are quite expensive to invite for a program. I think I have been hearing about the fact that it takes huge money to invite gospel artists to come and sing in a program, but I never knew that the cost was such an outrageous one. People are cashing out big with their talents; it's interesting anyway, but for now, we haven't reached an agreement on how many artists we can afford to invite until we are done sourcing for funds.

It's been planning and planning all along, meeting people and discussing with them the importance of this event to our church while soliciting for funds. Before now, we usually held the praise fiesta at the end of the year, but we thought of holding a mid-year praise, looking through the first half of the year, and coming together as a church to praise God for how far he has brought us and collectively praying for another fruitful six months through the year. We thought it's a great idea; after all, it's never too much to praise God.

Praise and worship reflect a connection between you and God. It gives one an opportunity to speak from the heart to God, declare words, and proclaim God's power, feeling his glory in the process for a better exploit in your life endeavors. People can always pray to God without gathering with a congregation. In fact, we owe him praise every day; however, it's never a bad idea to gather together as one church and give him all the praise he deserves collectively.

This is how important this event is to me, and I am really anticipating being able to witness it. Aside from the praise fiesta, I am positively anticipating a child dedication event from my big brother at Jos Nigeria. My brother married almost 3 years ago, and he has been anxious about the wife not conceiving. There have been moments of depression, sadness, and all of that. All medical approaches show that nothing is wrong with the couple medically, but yet there is no pregnancy. As a family, we took it upon ourselves and kept holding a virtual night vigil every Friday through a WhatsApp call, praying that God would intervene. Surprisingly, he has intervened, and the wife is currently pregnant. This news came as a shock to my family and me, and we are excited, praying, and waiting patiently for the safe birth of the baby and the mom. When this happens soon, it's going to be a great event, which my brother's wife and I are already planning on. I don't know the exact date or month of this event will take place, but obviously this year. It's going to be a joyful event for me and my family, and I pray that our expectations will not be cut short.

Thanks so much for reading through.

_{All images were designed by me using canva app}

This post is in response to the #hivelearners community contest on the topic titled Looking Forward.