Christmas in Nepal 2010

Wow! It has been way too long since I have posted on this blog. I just noticed that in my last post my kids are wearing shorts and t-shirts....my how a month and a half can change things. It is COLD here (ranges from 30 - 55 F) but we don't have any heat or insulation in our home so when we wake up and go to bed and it is 30 degrees in our home we are COLD...it definitely makes it harder to get out of bed in the morning!

Anyway, I wanted to catch you up on a few of our Christmas activities. We had a really wonderful Christmas. Christmas time is always hard here being away from family, friends and festivities in America but God has been so gracious to us to provide abundant blessings here where we are. Because there are not the usual sights, smells and reminders of Christmas around us here in Nepal, like there are in the US, often we have to work harder at making it "feel" like Christmas. We have to go to several different stores to find Christmas decorations (or things that will double as Christmas decorations), make special foods from scratch with several substitutions, etc. etc. However, sometimes having to work harder at it all makes it more special. Also, in some ways it is much easier here to focus on Jesus, the True reason for Christmas because when everything else is stripped away Jesus is what remains because Jesus is what Christmas is all about! As much as I long for "home" in America so much during the holiday time I try to remember these things and God fills me with such peace and joy and I am so thankful for that.

Shortly after Thanksgiving our Christmas festivities started with the decorating of our tree and our home (well the inside anyway...we don't decorate the outside here). This is the biggest, nicest tree we have ever had in Nepal. It is actually the same tree we have had for the past 3 Christmases here. We bought it when it was really small and we have kept it in a pot outside while we are not using it as our Christmas tree. It has grown very tall and thankfully our landlords gardener keeps transplanting it into different pots when it gets too big.

 After our tree was decorated it started to feel a bit more like the Christmas season and it does help that it starts to get really cold in December here. One of the traditions among Nepali Christians is to go around to different homes and sing Christmas carols and have a time of outreach to the neighbors who are listening. This year we were so blessed to have a bunch of kids from my friends' children's home come to our home and sing. Keane and Gracie LOVED it and kept saying, "Mommy, they are singing to Jesus!". It was precious. Afterwards, the kids all came inside and I had some hot chocolate and some small desserts for them. They also had a blast playing with Keane and Gracie.

December was also full of a lot of cooking and baking. Gracie LOVES to help me in the kitchen so we had a lot of fun together making cookies, cakes, meals, desserts, etc for all the different Christmas parties and outreaches that we went to. This year I made about 20 cakes (Jesus' birthday cake) and we wrapped them up and delivered them to our friends and neighbors and spent time sharing with them the true meaning of Christmas. We left each of them with a booklet that includes many stories from the Bible and tells them how to become a Christian. Each visit was a very special time for our family.

We also hosted a Christmas party for some of our closest national friends and partners. These amazing brothers and sisters in Christ are truly a blessing to our family. We had a wonderful evening of fellowship, sharing the Christmas story, exchanging gifts and eating. I made (with the help of some of my teammates) a bunch of traditional American Christmas foods (casseroles, breads, mashed potatoes, green beans, apple crisp, a big cake for Jesus' birthday, etc) and we brought several buckets of chicken from KFC. Many of our friends had never had KFC chicken before so it was a real treat. We had a wonderful time together!

A few days before Christmas day we had about 15 kids over our home to make Christmas cookie/cracker houses. Since we can't get gingerbread here and my oven is WAY too small to make ginger bread for 15 kids to make houses with we just make the houses with rectangular cookies that we can find here locally. This is something that we have done each Christmas we have been here with different friends, students, children, etc. It has always proven to be a really fun time and a great way to share the Christmas message! This year we had several of our friends children (many of whom are Christian or are raised in a Christian home) and we had several of our neighborhood kids. Two of our teammates helped out and we had a great time. We made the houses, shared the Gospel clearly using the salvation braceletes and gave each child (family) a Bible before they left. Keane and Gracie even enjoying "trying" to make their own Christmas house. I think next year they will love it even more!

On the 23rd we had a wonderful celebration with our American friends and many of our co-workers. It was a wonderful time with great Italian food and singing Christimas worship songs together around a huge fire pit. For Christmas eve morning we went with some of our friends to the Hyatt hotel breakfast buffet. It was delicious and we had a fun time together.  After that, we took the kids to the big trampoline and let them have some fun playing outside. That evening we enjoyed Pizza Hut and Baskin Robbins ice cream with friends! When we came home we started a new family tradition of giving the kids (and ourselves) some new Christmas pajamas! I was so excited when I found some great (random) Christmas fabric at a local market here and I had the pajamas made by a local tailor. They came out well. Then it was off to bed for the kids and time for us to put all the presents under the tree so they would be ready for Christmas morning and our celebration of Jesus' birthday! Keane and Gracie were excited but I have to admit that I think Ryan and I were more excited about seeing their faces in the morning. We were able to get them some neat gifts when we went to China (they have good imported toys there) and Ryan's parents sent 2 big boxes. I also had gifts that my parents had sent with some volunteers. We are blessed!

Christmas day started off with opening presents, coffee and our family tradition of homemade cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning. We also got to have some great conversations with our parents on SKPE. We had a great time together opening presents and celebrating Jesus' birthday. We sang Happy Birthday to Jesus and enjoyed the sugar cookies we made for His birthday. We didn't have power that morning but thanks to our generator we were able to make coffee and cinnamon rolls and keep the Christmas lights on all morning. We spent the afternoon with our American friends eating, laughing, singing and praying together and opening gifts. We also told the last story from our "Jesse Tree" Bible stories we had been telling all month (we told a story each night of December starting in the Old Testament...all the stories led up to the birth of Jesus).