The Christmas season is hard for young adults spending their first Christmas away from their home & families in the middle of Ethiopia with no WiFi. But it is also a sweet time to fully depend on the Father to fill you with Joy no matter where you are and no matter what you are doing.
Our Christmas celebration started way before actual Christmas Day. It started when a team on our squad, team Towdah, started planning how they were going to make Christmas special, and how they were going to serve our squad.
12 days of Christmas started on December 13th. Most nights at dinner, their whole team got up in front of the whole squad and shared a new surprise.
Day one – opening ceremony / 12 days of Christmas live performance / hanging of the wreath
Day two – listening prayer snowflakes
Day three – they decorated the whole guesthouse in Christmas Decorations
Day four – ugly sweater competition
Day five – Carol of the Bells live performance
Day six – Christmas themed Riff Off (riff off, like out of Pitch Perfect)
Day seven – Decorating the Christmas Tree
Day eight – hanging of the stockings (a sock)
Day nine – movie night! We watched Elf and had hot chocolate
Day ten – campfire with carols
Day eleven – Live Nativity play and Christmas Eve Service
Day Twelve – Christmas Day! They made us all so much food, decorated the table and put each of our stockings on our plates.
On Christmas Eve, the surprise required us to show up dressed nice before dinner. We were surprised by a photo shoot and a LIVE nativity play (if I ever have strong enough WiFi I’ll share the video). It was so special and hilarious.
Then we all came inside where Team Towdah had decorated the guesthouse by putting all the tables together in a straight line. They decorated the whole table all the way down.
Team grafted sat on one of the ends. It was so special being so close on this Holiday. They served us spaghetti for our Christmas Eve dinner and one my teammates, Amber said that spaghetti was the meal her family ate every Christmas Eve.
One of my favorite traditions that my family has is getting Chinese takeout on Christmas Eve. I have such fond memories waiting for my dad to finish talking to everyone after the Christmas Eve service, so that we could then go get the Chinese food together. We’d be walking outside, twirling in the snow, falling down, and having a snowball fight with Isaac on the way to the car.
Honestly, these were such mundane things at the time, but wow. Just thinking about it makes me smile. Wow, I appreciate my family so much and the traditions we have.
After dinner we all piled into the training center where we had our own Christmas Eve service. We sang songs, read scripture, and even lit candles and held them up like back home!
It’s probably the most homesick I’ve been on the race. So many little triggers. A couple of my teammates were feeling it too, and God, honestly I thank you for those feeling of sadness because I come from the BEST FAMILY EVER! I’m happy that I had things to miss. Traditions. Laughter. Making brunch together. Christmas walks. Home videos. The busyness of the kitchen when everyone’s home. Working out together. Watching It’s A Wonderful Life…. THANK YOU JESUS! And to my family, I miss you and I love you.
After our Christmas Eve service, we walked out, and I’m not kidding, it was the prettiest sky I’ve ever seen. There was no moon and you could see the galaxy. It was gorgeous and it was God.
God gave us that sky that night to celebrate the birth of His son, and I felt a joy for Jesus’s birth like never before.
I went to bed after that because I was getting up pretty early:))
Christmas Day:
Kirsten and I had bought cookies and made everyone that lives in Wakanda cards. We laid them out in our living room before anyone woke up.
Then, I went back to bed! I feel like that moment officially marks me an adult, because every other year of my life, I could never sleep through the night of Christmas Eve, and when I did, I would wake up at the crack of dawn. In fact, my teammate Jaynna only got 2-3 hours of sleep, because she never sleeps on Christmas Eve!
Haha, writing this reminds me of a time when I literally cleaned my room ALL night because I couldn’t sleep. On another night, I read three Harry Potter books! But now, I can sleep on Christmas Eve! Wow, time flies.
When I eventually woke up and walked into the guesthouse, I was taken back. I’ll eventually post the pictures on Facebook, Eventually the pictures will be up on Facebook, so you can see the beauty that I did. Team Towdah was up all night baking us Christmas cookies, fudge, and this mixture in a bowl which my best description of would be the middle of an apple pie.
On top of all of that, we got cinnamon rolls for breakfast!
The table was decorated so much that you could barely see the table. Each person was given candy, our stockings, and a balloon animal with a word on it!!!!!
There were so many notes in everyone’s stockings. Opening up that stocking was probably the best gift I’ve ever received because the gift was from God. Person after person did listening prayer and wrote me notes straight from Him. It was so beautiful. There were too many to read at the table, so after breakfast our team went down to Wakanda and we all opened our stockings together! In my family, you’re allowed to open your stockings as soon as you wake up. I always woke someone up whenever I did and we would open our stockings up together, and that is what I did in that moment with my six new sisters.
I was brought to tears with some of those notes, and I have never felt so loved. I would say that was the word to describe Christmas Day: LOVED!
Every morning, three people walk the Kindergarteners to school. Elena had that duty for the week, so she walked the little ones while we went through our stockings.
Then, when she came back we had a gift-giving time!
I got a beautiful friendship bracelet from Amber.
Kirsten gave us a 10-things-I-love-about-you card.
A free hug card from Gracie who isn’t really into physical touch. There was so much sacrificial love in that card. Thank you Gracie!!!
It was such a good time to be together as team, as a family. Laughing until we cried and genuinely loving each other.
At 10am, we all went up to the training center to worship. Wow, this was the first time I actually felt the importance of this day. Standing in that room worshipping with all my heart. Realizing how much I NEED Jesus. The importance of his life and the intimacy I GET to have with my Father because of Jesus.
Realizing that it took me traveling over half the globe to understand the sacrifice that Jesus made for me. To worship him on my hands and knees and literally crying out my praise. Realizing I am nothing without him. Nothing but a sinner, but through him I am WASHED WHITE. Wow, just re-writing this gives me the chills and brings tears to my eyes. Thank you Jesus. Thank you JESUS!
After worship we had another lunch of spaghetti. The oil in the spaghetti and probably all the sugar from breakfast made me feel sick, so I spent most of the afternoon chilling, watching movies, and resting. Then, I went out and played soccer for a bit which was really fun!
Dinner :
After dinner, we played cards and then got ready for our Christmas movie as a squad. HOPEthiopia is the best, and we actually have a projector that we play movies on! We use it for our Friday Movie Nights with the kids and for our squad movie nights.
We watched “It’s a White Christmas” and it was so good!:)
Christmas was so amazing. It’s definitely something that everyone on the field and back home would comment on, being gone for Christmas but it was incredible. God always has the ultimate plan for each of us and so yes, I was in Ethiopia for a Christmas out of obedience. In that obedience God gave me a family. :))
FUNDRAISER UPDATE: ADOPT A MONTH!
SEPTEMBER (TAKEN!!! YAYAYA!!!!!)
OCTOBER (TAKEN!!!!! WAAHOOOOOO)
NOVEMBER (TAKENNNNNN!!!)
DECEMBER (taken!!! Whoop whoop!!)
JANUARY (taken!! THANK YOU!!!)
FEBRUARY (needed!)
MARCH
APRIL
MAY
JUNE (may or may not be needed, depends what day I get home)
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Ways YOU can Join me on my Spiritual Journey:
1. Pray. I will need a multitude of prayers ranging from strength, wisdom, clarity, love, joy… The list goes on. Whatever your heart desires and feels right, pray. Here in Ethiopia we have a little boy at the orphanage who’s legs don’t work, pray healing over his body please!
- SPREAD THE WORD! Tell everyone about my trip and show them my blog.
- SUBSCRIBE! When you subscribe you will get all notifications when I post on my blog about my trip and any updates!
- If you would like to donate to me still, please donate directly to me and not World Race. I AM FULLY FUNDED but I could always use money to cover vaccinations costs and so on! I do have squad mates who aren’t fully funded, if you feel lead please donate to them and keep them on the field!!!!
Thank you and God bless you all!
