A Christmas to Remember!

So Christmas was really a three-day event this year! The highlights…

… I was doing an advent devotion that my pastor and mentor Elliott had sent over via email. It was really wonderful to study that out, I love old traditions there is something so rich and deep about them. What I loved most about them is sitting down over our three-day extended Christmas with Ruthie, Karina (two great girls from Oregon) and Jessica to spend time reading the scriptures and talking about topics around advent. I loved it! I also loved talking with my brother Dan each day!!! We talked three separate times- it was great, I felt so loved. Thanks Dan!!!

Christmas Eve started with church in the morning, where my friend George stood up to sing out Micah 6:8 and his friend Charles got up with him to dance. It was so so funny, I wish I could have recorded the dancing on video!! After church we prepared baskets to give to the ‘LC-1” leader… he’s kind of like our governor of the islands. We wanted to make baskets for some of the poorest of families. We filled the baskets with practical items such as beans, rice, posho, tea, sugar, soap and a pineapple. We wanted to keep our identity hidden as to the giving of the basket that is why we gave it to the LC-I leader. Later in the afternoon Karina and Ruthie cooked down in the kitchen making a feast for us and our invited guests :) we invited men and women from the camp that we were in relationship with that didn’t have any family and were alone for the holidays. They made a beef stew with beans and dumplings… the dumplings were so so good!!! Ruthie and I made rice-crispy treats (Karina had brought over marshmallows from the states and they have rice-crispys here) they were a hit! Later I went to go and make paper snowflakes for decorations, I made everyone invited a snow flake with there name on it and then put a scripture verse on it. So everyone came, and at first it seemed a bit awkward because here are all these people who don’t really know each other… so karina and ruthie started singing Christmas carols (I would like to say I tried but you know my voice :) ) and a quarter of the guest spoke English so I grabbed Kompatant, the man I knew (he pilots our boat to the mainland when we have visitors) who speaks about as much English as I speak lugandan and we started dancing around our mudd hutt (with a grass roof)…. Ahh, this got people laughing! We danced and danced all around, it was great… and so to the next Christmas carol the girls sang and a new dancing partner I picked. We had so much fun… it lightened the awkwardness and made a joyful evening! Then, Christmas day, I made banana pancakes to start the day! Note to self: BRING A GRITTLE TO AFRICA. I sat making pancakes for almost 2-hours!!!!!!! After church I went into the camp to wish mama syheedi a Merry Christmas. I ended up sitting with her for 2-3 hours, it was great. She invited me into her hut with her 5-children and we ate rice and beef with our hands. She handed me a spoon because I think she knows we usually use a spoon, but I have come to prefer to eat with my hands… its almost easier, especially when you have a piece of meat with fat around it, it is much easier to eat the meat and go around the fat. With a fork and knife you usually end up eating a bit of the fat. So lets do it, lets go back to eating with out a fork and a knife!! It really is much easier! I came back up to ywam and everyone was just relaxing, it was wonderful… just like Christmas at home where everyone is just laying around! It was nearing 7pm and nobody had cooked dinner!!! Jess and Karina went down to cook only to find the chicken I had been given as a gift earlier had almost pecked the chicken jess had been given earlier, to death!!! We had to eat Jess’ chicken that night! But all we had was a dull knife! So as I was on the phone with my great friend ‘oh-sama-Ben’ … Bennie Shu :) I turned around only to find Karina sawing at this poor chickens neck :( it was so sad… after I got off the phone I went with a flashlight (remember it gets dark at 7pm here and there is no electricity) to my chicken and put the spotlight on him and asked him…’how do you feel about almost taking another man’s life tonight’ only to hear a small chuckle in the background, followed by my friend Karina, who had Hope’s voice (my sister) for a split second, as she said… ‘Amanda’…. In a stern voice… I didn’t know what I did!!! Later I realized the boy Tony who had given jess the chicken was in the kitchen with us and he would have felt extremely bad had he known his gift was almost pecked to death! I get in trouble in the U.S. I get in trouble in Africa… you really can’t take me anywhere… it was a really funny interview with the chicken though, everyone laughed when we were alone! The next day, the 26^th was really our (karina, ruthie, jess and I) Christmas together…. We had drawn names for gifts and we opened gifts together. It was so great, jess had gotten my name and she knows how much I love adventures and surprises. She had my gifts hidden throughout the base with clues to the next gift. Oh, I had so much fun, I was screaming with sheer joy throughout the hunt for my gifts! After we opened and exchanged gifts we sat to pray for one another… I loved it, I always need prayer!!!! So we really had our Christmas feast this day, the day after Christmas…. And a feast we had! Ruthie, Henry and I were the chefs of the day. So, I went to slaughter my chicken…I had one foot on the chickens legs, the other on the wings and my friend Henry is telling me to pull the neck out to extend it so I can cut it… I couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t… I started laughing, screaming and crying all at once… needless to say Henry ended up killing our chicken. I thought I would be brave, but when it came down to the dirty work I just couldn’t do it. I still had my feet on the chicken when Henry cut it, and when I came out from the Massacre and uncovered my eyes… I had blood all over my ankles!!!!! Ruthie and I made guacamole and ‘chips’… chips---- we eat this food here called posho. Posho is a tasteless clump of corn-flour I think and they usually make it with beans. Anyhow, I was told that if I make posho I can than roll it in small balls, smash it and fry it and I’ll have something like a salsa dipping chip. So we did and they were great! We also made what Karina calls ‘buckeye’s’ but what I think is better known as my mom’s famous peanut butter balls. I couldn’t believe it, here I am in Africa and I am enjoying real authentic peanut butter balls! I loved it they were so sweet and good! Janet we finished off the peanut butter you send on these fabulous treats, thanks again! Henry boiled the chicken with some good spices and veggies and I had found a can of coconut milk in town a few days earlier and we threw that in the chicken and it was so so good! Henry also cooked up some rice and we had a feast! And how could I forget, the first thing we cooked was popcorn, now how could I go without popcorn… my mom raised me well :) thanks mom! This was a Christmas to remember!

Keeping Christmas

I was reading some Christmas stories our of a book from Henry Van Dyke and this was at the beginning….i think it is worth blogging :)

“He who observes the day, Observes it in honor of the Lord”. Romans 14:6

“IT IS A GOOD THING TO OBSERVE CHRISTMAS DAY.

The mere marking of times and seasons, when all agree to stop work and make merry together, is a wise and wholesome custom. It helps us to feel the supremacy of the common life over the individual life. It reminds us to set our own little watch, now and then, by the great clock of humanity that runs on sun time.

But there is a better thing than the observance of Christmas day, and that is keeping Christmas.

Are you willing to forget what you have done for other people, and to remember what other people have done for you; to ignore what the world owes you, and to think what you owe the world; to put your rights in the background, and your duties in the middle distance, and your chances to do a little more than your duty in the foreground; to see that your fellows are just as real as you are, and try to look behind their faces to their hearts, hungry for joy; to admit that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life; to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe, and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness –are you willing to do these things even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.

Are you willing to stoop down and consider the needs and the desires of little children; to remember the weakness and loneliness of people who are growing old; to stop asking how much your friends love you, and ask yourself whether you love them enough; to bear in mind the things that other people have to bear on their hearts; to try to understand what those who live in the same house with you really want, without waiting for them to tell you; to trim your lamp so that it will give more light and less smoke, and to carry it in front so that your shadow will fall behind you; to make a grave for your ugly thoughts, and a garden for your kindly feelings, with the gate open –are you willing to do these things even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.

Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest things in the world –stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death –and that the blessed life that began in Bethlehem two thousand years ago is the image and brightness of the Eternal Love? Then you can keep Christmas.

And if you keep it for a day, why not always?

But you can never keep it alone.”

-Henry Van Dyke

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to you!!!! So I have been doing my best to live up the U.S. traditions of Christmas…by starting to play holiday music in October !!!! yes, October… and this past weekend we got a fake tree and decorated it… my very own Charlie Brown Christmas tree and I love it, it is beautiful. I will be spending Christmas on the island, slaughtering my own dinner :) making stuffing (jess has got these charcoal coals down and she makes a mean stuffing!) French toast for breakfast over the coals… I can’t wait, we are on the mainland only for a night getting prepared for our Christmas week!!! I am really looking forward to the time because most people will not be around and it will be a great week for solitude. For new years I will be heading to a village to spend it with my African family here, Mama and Papa O…. olive and okoro teferio.

I am so thankful for my holiday to Zanzibar. It was so so nice. White sand beaches, beautiful architecture and landscape, great food, great people. I am so grateful for the opportunity to go to Zanzibar… i would love to go back some time!

… Syheedi, a Muslim women on the island married to the witch doctor surrendered her life to the Lord this past weekend when a Discipleship team from Montana YWAM was on the island doing hut to hut evangelism and shared Jesus with her… one of the first things she said is to ‘be sure and tell Amanda’… she speaks very very little English but each time I see her I do my best to communicate. I am excited for her and asked her about church but she is really scared of what her husband may do to her if she attends… God will work all things out.

So I am currently preparing to teach through one of my favorite books on the bible… song of songs… I am so excited for this and will spend the next few weeks preparing for this!

Well Merry Christmas to you and Happy New Year!!!!
Love you… kisses and hugs to all…. I wish there were a mistle toe in Africa, but than who would I kiss ?! mandy