Christmas

Hello All! I hope that everyone has had a great Christmas season! I have not written in a while, and to be honest, I'm having a hard time gathering my thoughts for a "meaningful" blog post. We have thoroughly enjoyed the Christmas season here, but it did make us feel quite homesick, so we are trying to continue to process everything. For now, I will show you some pictures from our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day celebrations.

Our team celebrated together on Christmas Eve. We gathered together and make pizzas (a HUGE treat here! We cannot get cheese in town, so we are not able to make pizza often). After eating, we exchanged Christmas gifts together. Because things are scarce in town, we all had to get really creative with what we got each other. It was really fun to see how intentional everyone was with the gifts they got each other! After gifts, we went Christmas caroling to some of our friends' compounds. It was so much fun! We sang 4 songs at each set of houses. Everyone loved it and started clapping along to the songs (songs that were unfamiliar to them). It was a blast! We really enjoyed the day and had a great time "creating memories" with our new team.

Our team on Christmas Eve

Some of the yummy pizzas!

Our Christmas trees and gifts for each other.

Caroling was hard to capture since it was dark outside, but here is a shot of us caroling by candlelight. We visited Veronica's (pictured on right) compound first, and then she joined us for the rest of caroling. She seemed to really enjoy it!

Will and Shawn hit a home-run this year on finding gifts for their wives! It has been hard for us as couple to have a place to go for date nights. There are no cute restaurants in town or places to go for dates. So, Will and Shawn turned an un-used classroom on our compound into a Date Night Cafe/ Coffee House!! They worked for several weeks to clean out the room, find furniture for it and put up decorations. The made a place to sit and read (with a bookshelf full of books) and a place to sit and watch a movie. They even have a table where you can put a tea kettle and make tea. It was very creative and Heather and I were both really excited! 

All of us in the Date Night Cafe/ Coffee Shop!

 Most of the Christians here in Mundri spend all of Christmas day at church. We went to church from 10:30am until around 5:00pm. The service was about 4 hours long and then they served a BIG meal for everyone afterwards. We really enjoyed the service and had a great time celebrating the birth of Jesus with our new church community. One of my favorite things about the day is that the children get VERY dressed up. If the family can afford it, each child will get a new outfit to wear to church for Christmas. Some of the outfits were very extravagant! Think: little boys in full suits and ties and girls in "flower girl" or Prom-looking dresses :). It was so cute!

Two beautiful girls dressed in their Christmas best!

At one point in the afternoon, a group from another church came over to sing Christmas songs to our church. Everyone was really excited and gathered around them. There were a lot of people at church! 

Everyone gathered around while the other church came to sing

We were very grateful for our Christmas celebrations here in Mundri. We were very touched by how excited people get to celebrate the coming of Jesus TOGETHER here. No one stays around their own house all day, everyone goes to church, visits friends' houses and celebrates with others the whole day. It truly felt like a joyful celebration all day long!