I don’t know about
you, but when I throw my Christmas parties in America, I always have a loud
speaker and microphone, party host, pop singer who sings us Christmas music,
pianist, guitarist, professional opera singer. We always sing lots of Christmas
songs and dance around with each other and have along with a power point slide
of the lyrics in case my guests don’t know the words.
Oh, what? You never do that? Well let me tell you, they do
here in Vietnam.
We weren’t sure where we were going or what was going to
happen. We just knew that the lady we went to the leprosy center with invited
us to come to a coffee shop because she just sold a house and shared the gospel
with them; she’s having a party and wants us to answer questions about the
gospel when they ask. So, we went with that in mind.
We walked into the coolest coffee shop I’ve ever seen. We
walked up the steps to the second floor and the doors were opened for us, and
there were tons of people dressed really nice, lots of food, and music on. We were
all dressed down, in jeans and a t-shirt. They began clapping for us when we
walked in. Little did we know just what we were getting ourselves into.
Everyone was so happy to see us. The dancing began almost
immediately, food was spread around, and games were played. Then, they asked us
a few questions about Christmas. Why do we celebrate Christmas? But Jesus was
born more than 2,000 years ago, why would you still celebrate? Which was pretty
unexpected and we were unsure if we could truly answer those questions, but we
did.
They asked us to come and perform for them. I knew Making
Melodies would be a good one to use with all the older people there. After we
started singing and doing the motions, the pianist began playing along with the
song. Then we performed a skit. God has
gifted me with the ability to think on the spot and come up with things on a
whim. And so, we assigned roles and performed The Good Samaritan. They key
part was the pianist. We asked him to play along with what happened in the skit
and he did such a good job!
We had such a great evening. So many pictures were taken by
the professional photographer.
We left that evening with a lady we call Grandma doing
Making Melodies, sticking her tongue out at us and spinning around (in the
song), and a plate full of food – watermelon, cakes, and Vietnamese fruit.
Of course, we didn’t bring a camera, so unfortunately I have no pictures from the party. But, here is one from my daily life…
That’s how Courtney and I get in and our of our bed each day. We do a backwards roll.
