I am absolutely exhausted from illness, getting up early and going to bed late several days in a row and carrying dinner and wet laundry all the way home from the laundry mat that is in Israel. As I nearly collapse over the door way into our house I see my teammates’ cheerful faces as they welcome us in. They all have art supplies in hand, Ashley and Stacy have some scissors and paper to make snow flakes. Lauren and Erin are working on the paper chain, and Casey is busily hanging all the snowflakes from the ceiling.
They were decorating the house for Christmas!! Christmas is coming in the Negev (that is in Israel!).
They are very quick to introduce Paul and I to Dusty the Sandman, (Frosty’s distant cousin- they don’t see much of each other since Dusty likes being here in Israel a lot and the climate here is not very conducive to Frosty’s survival), who is hanging on our wall. He has a cowboy hat, sunglasses, a carrot nose (it is the family trait), raisin smile, a scarf (because it is surprisingly cold in the Negev desert) and stick arms. He is pretty glorious and I am so glad that he came to stay with us through the Christmas season.
Paul and I have tons of food in hand so while I am loading all the clothes onto the drying rack they clear off the table and set it for dinner. We have meatballs, baked chicken, new potatoes, rice and noodles for dinner tonight. You see we have been working at a soup kitchen most nights since being here. Whatever food is left over when we get ready to leave our friend, Esther, packs up and sends home with us. They have worked out a deal with the hotels near the Dead Sea (that is in Israel and in fact close enough to here for the following transaction to take place), where they send their leftover foods from the day before and we serve it to the less fortunate in this town. It is a glorious set up of seeing food not be wasted but sent where it can be used for the most good. You remember your mom saying (please insert shrill disciplinary tone here) ‘there are starving children in China who would love that last bite of food’, well these people have worked out a great system where some don’t have to gorge themselves and the starving here can get some of that food that would not otherwise be eaten. I love the genius of it all.
We decide to do debrief over dinner as I would really like to make it to bed soon. As soon as that was over and we got dinner cleaned up, I take my opportunity to steal away to the shower. I enjoy my hot shower in Israel. It was pretty refreshing but by the end I was still ready to fall into my bed ASAP.
I walk back through the common area from the bathroom to go to my bedroom and Ashley in her great wisdom asks “Heather, you wanna come decorate for Christmas with us?” I had just been saying how I wanted to be involved with the decorating and was kind of sad that I had missed out. Man, I really wanted to go to bed though. I slipped into my room and put my stuff down, glance at my bed and knowing that this would be my only opportunity to help with the big part of decorating decide, ‘eh I will get to sleep later’ and returned to the common area to decorate our humble abode for the time that we celebrate the birth (in Israel) of our Lord.
To be continued…
