Christmas in Ethiopia. What a concept! This year I had no snow, no presents wrapped in pretty paper, no cranberry covered turkey, and no typical family Christmas pictures. I had something so beautifully different.
My team and another team share a house outside the main guesthouse at our ministry site, Hopethiopia. One of my beautiful teammates, Amber, has a passion for decorating, so we went to work filling our little home with Christmas sentiments. By each door, we made signs saying ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Happy Holidays’. While in Cambodia, another one of my teammates bought a pack of plain printer paper which happened to be yellow, so we used it to make snowflakes (yes dad. Yellow snowflakes). We strung the snowflakes on a string and hung it across our living room. Then we cut branches off of some trees and assembled them into a makeshift Christmas tree in a bucket. Amber had brought a small string of lights from home that we put on the tree. She also made cute ornaments out of popsicle sticks and sparkly pipe cleaners. My teammate Kae offered one of her shirts to cover up the bucket. It was so homey and fun!
One of the teams planned out the 12 days of Christmas for our whole squad. We had a tiny wreath and Christmas banner hanging up, which was so fun! We each gave said team one sock, which they hung up to make stockings. Throughout the next week or so, squadmates wrote notes for one another and put them in their stocking. The night of Christmas Eve, we had a candlelit worship service. I was walking toward the door of the training center to leave the service, when I heard gasps from the people in front of me. As I stepped outside, I was awestruck. The sky was BEAUTIFUL. I’ve never seen more stars than I did that night. God was all over, showcasing His loving glory to us, His giddy kids. What a night. I couldn’t help but worship.
Then, on Christmas day, we walked into the guesthouse for breakfast to see all the tables lined up and decorated like a big family meal. Each team sat together and ate chocolate chip cookies, chocolate bark, no bake cookies, cinnamon apple sauce, and CINNAMON ROLLS. All paid for by this one generous and loving team. (Shoutout to Towdah!) We ate these delicious treats while we read the notes that our squadmates wrote for us. I didn’t miss getting physical presents at all, because I was loved on in such a sweet non-material way. It didn’t cost money, but time and thought, something I’m going to strive to give more of at home. So simple and so powerful. These notes were full of affirmation, things they saw in me that meant a lot to them, prophetic words for the future, and SO MUCH LOVE.
The rest of the day was filled with football playing, photo taking, family dinner, and worship.
This Christmas was pretty drastically different from any I’ve had before, but it was SO beautiful. It was filled with choosing to love one another through home sickness and going the extra mile. I will treasure this African Christmas forever.
