I know I’m posting 2 posts on Christmas but I wanted to tell you about our very first Christmas Eve here in Kenya. It was quite different from how we’ve celebrated in the US!
We started the morning (after being without water for about a week) with water running in the taps! Yea we were excited too until I ran the water…
Oh well, at least there’s water in the taps, right?
Then we were off to the farm. After dropping off the water pump we ran into “town” to get sodas for this afternoons celebration with the kids from Mercy and look what passed me by…
After some work on the farm we went to pick up the kids from Mercy and bring them back to the farm for our Christmas Eve lunch celebration. While Chuck and Annastacia went for chicken and chips I stayed behind with the kids. I read the Christmas story from the book of Luke, answered some questions (we ran the gamut on questions…why does God want us to be fruitful? Which led to a discussion on sex. Did Jesus have brothers and sisters? Which led to a discussion on the ultimateness (is that a word?) of God.) and had my hair played with and braided. Then we just sat under the tree and relaxed, waiting for lunch…
Once lunch arrived everyone queued for chicken, chips and soda and sat in the shade enjoying lunch…
After lunch Chuck needed to walk to the river to check on the water pump so we all went along…
We came back to the tree, relaxed and talked for a bit then took the kids back to Mercy…
After the kids were all back home Chuck and I stayed at the farm until around 7pm. We stopped at our local grocery store on the way home and it was a madhouse…it actually reminded me of the stores back home (sniff, sniff) on Christmas Eve, crazy! As we drove home we realized the electricity was out…again! But we got in the house, made some tuna (no electricity needed for that) and ate by candlelight and discussed how different this Christmas Eve has been.
No matter how different though I have to remember the reason we are celebrating, not the external circumstances (lights, music, parties or lack thereof). Our God came down to Earth out of Heaven to be among us. Jesus Christ is totally the reason for celebrating today and every day! Merry Christmas 🙂