Hello everyone!
Thought I’d come on and tell you a little bit about our lovely Christmas in Africa, and a little bit of the parallels from this Christmas and my ones back home. I do have a video uploaded on YouTube about this too if you’d like to see what I’m about to tell you in action.
First, Christmas Eve. My little sisters, Ella and Jordyn, and I have a Christmas Eve tradition. We build a blanket fort and sleep in it. Sometimes we’ll be planning it for a couple weeks before hand, but we can only build it on Christmas Eve. I have such an amazing team!! We made a blanket fort in our room and had a sign on it that said “Adamson Sister Christmas Fort: Africa Edition” and it really made it feel like Christmas for me.
Later, our squad had an open mic night where my team did a funny skit for the squad. We even won the award for best actors! Thespians for life!!
We then all huddled around the TV at the base and watched The Polar Express together. We also made hot chocolate and I got to drink out of the Christmas mug my Guatemala ministry host, Brayan, gave me.
Then my team hung out in our room talking until midnight so we could say Merry Christmas first thing. Amber even gave me her Christmas card then because it was already Christmas in Australia.
Now, Christmas morning. We got a lovely wake up call in the form of loud singing and banging on our door. As well as clapping empty plastic water bottles together.
We then walked out of our rooms to see a long table with cute Christmas decorations on it. The cooks at the base made us donuts and cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Back home, some years my mum makes cinnamon rolls for Christmas breakfast too so it was really nice to get that.
My team then did our secret santa fife exchange. I got a stick from Val because she said it was a wand from Harry Potter. Amber had me for secret santa and she gave me toffee pretzel sea salt chocolate and tabasco jelly beans, since I love spicy food. Let me tell you, chocolate tastes AMAZING when you’re in the middle of nowhere in Africa and haven’t had good chocolate in a few months. HPK also have everyone on our team a face mask and she got a lavender one for me since she knows it’s my favorite scent.
We then did a whole squad white elephant! I ended up getting Ghirardelli dark chocolate sea salt caramel snowmen! Again, it tastes even better when you haven’t had good chocolate in a long long time.
We then had a powder puff game! Powder puff for anyone that may not know is football played by girls. I’m not super into sports but everyone had a great time.
Lastly, we all huddled around a bonfire and sang some Christmas songs and shared what this Christmas meant to us.
This Christmas was very different to what I’m used to. But I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. Yeah, I missed my family back home a lot, but this is most likely my first and last Christmas in Africa. Also my first and last Christmas with this group of people. What are the odds that we all would say yes to a crazy 9 month mission trip at the same time. That this specific group of 18-20 year olds would come together to worship Jesus and travel the world. Everything that I’m experiencing, they are the only other people in the world who understand it because they were there through all of it.
I, honestly, was having a real hard time during the days leading up to Christmas. I was always thinking about how I wasn’t with my family and I so badly wanted to be with them. But God showed me how this is exactly where I’m supposed to be. I may not be with the family I was born with but we’re spending Christmas this year with the family we chose.
That’s all for now!
See you soon!
-Chelsea
