Christmas

We celebrated Christmas on Christmas eve, starting with chocolate chip pancakes. Then we guessed who was our "angel" and exchanged Christmas presents. Most got blankets or food. I got fruit, chocolate, a couple hair clips and laundry soap.

The amazing thing about laundry soap here, is that it has instructions as to how to hand-wash clothing. It's wonderful, because I have been doing my laundry by hand about every 3 days and it only took me 5 mins to do a "load" of laundry (some underwear and 1-2 outfits), so I questions the cleanliness of it. Now that I have instructions, I think it will get cleaner.

Christmas day we did a program at the house. All of the neighborhood kids came and some of the parents came too (about 150 people)!! We did both our dramas and a christmas play. The kids in the english school (at the house) also did a christmas play. It was fun to watch them act out the story of the 1st christmas.

After the program we went accross the street to the slum and feed about 300 people. 2 years a team did the same thing and they were not welcome. The situation got very tense and scarey and they were kicked out. This Christmas was the first time that a team has been back in the slum, and welcomed with an open door and the potential of future opportunities.

We hauled huge pots of curry and rice, down the dirt path, across the street and into the slum. It had taken several hours to prepare the food, but only minutes for it to disappear, satisfying many hungry people, (mostly women and children). It was a very touching moment when we realized that taking time on Christmas day to feed the hungry, was a representation of what Christmas is all about, God’s gift to us, and our lives as gifts to Him.

In the evening, we had Christmas with our hosts. Our team bought Christmas presents for each them. Their gifts were practal things that they didn't have - pillows, sheets, toothbrush, toothpaste, laundry soap. They were very blessed and so happy.

Then we received a surpise - before we left Idaho, our families sent packages with Christmas presents for us, so on Christmas we had presents from home. Yes, people cried and it was happy.

For dinner we had our goat, that the boys bought (live), prepared, and cooked.

It was yummy... and the boys even put goat brain in the curry, and a couple of them ate the eyeballs.