A Message from Team Judah:
Merry Christmas from Kenya!
It is three days until Christmas. Christmastime here is surreal, with the closest thing to snow being our skin that flakes off after we are sunburned; but we have been making the best of it by playing make believe like good girls and boys. We make believe that our backpacks tied to the top of the bus are giant Christmas trees carefully picked from the nursery fit for twelve-foot ceilings and boxes full of extravagant and cherished ornaments. We make believe that the chai tea we drink every morning is Christmas hot chocolate, and that the stars we can see through our roof are Christmas lights. There is usually at least one Rudolph among us, with a nose that might not be bright enough to guide the way but is bright enough to attract attention from Kenyans who have never seen sunburn before. We appreciate the green toilet paper that is common here as the decoration that it is, and we allow the Christmas movies and music we watch and listen to on our laptops to catapult us into another world.
Even more exciting is how much closer an experience we are having to the real Christmas than ever before. We see shepherds perhaps much like the ones that came to visit Jesus herding large groups of cattle down the dirt roads, and we even met up with an old wise man (granted we visited him instead of him visiting us). At 103, he has had more Christmases than I can fathom and if I didn’t know better I would wonder if he was there for the actual birth of Jesus. He also gave us a sheep to be slaughtered and eaten on Christmas, so although we won’t be lying in the stable with sheep like Jesus, we will be eating one. And finally, at least one person on my team has been known to follow a star (ahem, Aaron) to find the store.
Although it is hard to be away from our friends and family during Christmas, we are blessed because no matter where we are in the world Jesus is close to us. Overall, our time in Kenya has been good but challenging. The living situation is tight, but it has continued to improve as some people have moved out of the house we are staying in and into their tents. The first week we spent doing door-to-door evangelism and praying for people in the community during the day, and had open-air meetings during the evening. Last week we hosted a conference at Pastor William’s church (the pastor whose house we are staying at), and next week we will have the open-air meetings every night and we are asking the Lord what He would have us do during the day. For Christmas Team Judah plans to visit homes in the surrounding community to pray for them, give them rice and beans, sing them some Christmas carols, and invite them to the church service we will be having that day.
Merry Christmas from Kenya! I pray that it would be a time of rest, of fellowship with your families, and of thanksgiving to the One who entered into our flesh and made it possible for us to be near to God.
