No offense to my family or any of the friends with whom I
have spent the holidays, but I have to say, this was the best Christmas ever! We celebrated on the actual day at our
ministry sites and again (bonus!) when the squad reunited for debrief over New
Years.
I realize that it’s been a while since the festivities, but
you have to realize that we are in East Africa
with very limited access to electricity and internet.
I invite you to enjoy the awesome video (scroll down) of
Teams Aletheia and Transformers performing a version of “All I want for
Christmas” made by my teammate Angi.
Both celebrations featured:
- gift
exchange: Secret Santa (with thoughtful creative gifts) and White Elephant
(with mostly junk!)
- special
gifts from our squad leader Allison who had just returned from the USA:
hand sanitizer, wet wipes, tampons, and gum!
stockings
(“clean” socks labeled with our names) filled with candy and encouraging
notes from each other
- home-baked
and decorated cookies
- traditional
food: cinnamon rolls, turkey (our guys “wrestled” it, plucked it, etc),
mashed and sweet potatoes, stuffing, salads
- “formal”
(dress-up with jewelry and make-up and ties!) candlelit dinner with
coloring book pages by Dan’s nieces & nephews as placemats
- mistletoe
(uh-oh!)
- entertainment:
- movies
(crowded around the laptop) like Elf,
The Holiday, Home Alone - team
skits and mock pageants - snowball
(paper wad and toilet roll) fight - bottle
concert by Dunamis - Christmas
carol showdown (re-write lyrics and perform) - Judah
ain’t getting nu-nu-nuthin’ for Christmas because somebody snitched on
them for … using a Bible to smash a cockroach, holding hands, getting on
the internet in China, scrubbing the squatty potty with a toothbruch,
etc! - All
the other teams got run over by Karis - Libre
saw someone kissing Santa Claus - The
12 days of Christmas, according to Quake, included 12 pounds of ugali, 5
“How are you?’s – I am fine”, and 1
Merry Christmas with the G squad!
Some of this might seem like “you had to be there” kind of stuff,
but it was so great, I wanted to share it with you all. It feels like home.
