I had wondered since the time i left home how Christmas on the race would be. Away from my family, away from home, away from everything that’s familiar. The thing that I was steadily reminded of is that it doesn’t matter where you are, or even who you’re with. Christmas is about Jesus, and we can celebrate Him anytime, anywhere! Happy birthday Jesus!!!
Christmas Eve…
On the evening of Christmas Eve, Wongen Kafe opened their second floor to us to host a party for some festive feasting! We ordered a bunch of delicious Thai food from next door and had all the guys over for a Christmas Eve dinner. It was such a nice time of listening to Christmas music, eating, and togetherness.We decorated the whole place with these hanging snowflakes 🙂
It was so nice to all sit at one big table and pass around the food, just like Christmas dinner at home. We even joked about having a kids table off to the side, but luckily, we all fit in this one 🙂 Wongen makes some killer brownies, and for dessert we got to savor those and hot chocolate!
Family photo 2010
Christmas Morning!…
By Christmas ‘morning’ I really mean about 3pm 😛 Our schedule was all weird with night ministry, so we slept in Christmas morning and woke up refreshed as ever! We picked out a tree in a pot that was in our front ‘yard’. I had never decorated a Christmas tree ON Christmas before, so this was a fun first! We used the snowflake decorations that we had decorated the Kafe with from our dinner the night before.
The star on top of our Thai Christmas tree.
“To seek for a King was their intent, and to follow the star wherever it went.”
Team Harmony (minus Casey because she got to spend Christmas with her husband) and our Charlie Brown tree! We did a secret santa gift exchange this year and stuck our gifts under the tree.
Carin (furthest left) made a scrumptious Christmas breakfast! The girl can cook. We had three different types of pancakes, sugar roasted pecans, and cinnimon spiced apples, which we enjoyed using chopsticks of course. It
was such a lovely beginning to our Christmas day.
Carin had my name for secret santa! What she wrote me in my card was my absolute favorite… “Have an elephantastic, whale of a Christmas because you are the creme de la creme!” Love her. She got me such a cute shirt that I just had to wear for the rest of the day. It’s a Christmas tradition!
🙂
We tried to rent motorbikes on Christmas night, but everyplace either didn’t have enough for all of us or was closed already. So we found a shopping cart and made some fun with our own mode of transportation!
Ah. Finishing the night with some McDonalds ice cream and coffee.
I needed that coffee for energy because I had quite a bit of skyping to do! Getting to see my grandparents for the first time since I left was such a treat. And getting to catch up with and see all my family and Ben on the same screen was such a treasure! The best gift of all was getting to read part of Luke 2 with Ben. Thank You Jesus for creating all these beautiful people in my life. Thank You Jesus for coming here in love. You are the reason for all our festivities!
Long lay the world in sin and error pining til He appeared and the soul felt it’s worth. A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices!
