They have arrived!

Each year at the graduation ceremony we present our year 12's with crosses to remind that them that while they are leaving our community Christ still goes with them.  It's a quite a special moment as the principal and chaplain place the necklaces over the head s of each student and you see that they know - this is the last thing they get from us - the promise of Emmanuel - God with us.

For my first three years the selecting and purchasing of crosses was the realm of the chaplain.  And not really a major job as we had no more than 45 students graduate in a year.  Last year though our chaplain was unwell and unable to organise the crosses.  So it fell to me.  Which is ok I guess.  I didn't have as much notice as I would've liked and the company that we had previously bought the crosses from didn't let me know that they didn't have enough in stock which meant I was waiting for crosses that would never arrive.  The short of it is that I spent a lot of time on the phone getting cranky at managers, calling every christian bookstore in SA and Australia, and plowing through the internet to unearth every cross in a similar style to the ones we already had.  I bought out Australia of one entire line of necklace.  And some only turned up days before I needed them because they were expressed posted.

And I nearly had a nervous breakdown.

However, in my searching I discovered something new.   A different type of necklace from the surfy type we'd been buying.  It was perfect.  I bought one.  Just one.  And I took it to our principal and to our new chaplain at the start of the year and said - "these are what I want our year 12's to have".  I got the go ahead.   They were hardly going to say no - they're completely perfect for our school!  They're in the shape of a shield - like our school logo, they have a cross engraved on the front and they have Joshua 1 v 9b engraved on the back which is our official verse for the leaders in our school - well, we used it a few times and then I found these crosses and made it the official verse!!

I bought 250 of them.

And they have all arrived already.  2 months early.

We have 60 something students graduating this year and about 80 next year.  I have bought enough crosses that who ever needs to do it next year doesn't have to think about it - and the year after and the year after!

A little overkill - but no one should go through that stress!