My most unique Christmas, ever.

Most of the people with whom I spend a majority of my time left Musoma a couple weeks ago, either for furloughs or going home for the holidays. I knew that I would be spending a lot of time alone around the Christmas holiday and I was oddly fine with it. In the past I think that would have sent me into a pit of seemingly justifiable self-pity. You might have even felt pity for me, who knows? But, that didn't happen.

I was at peace completely. There were a few offers to come over on Christmas day since I was going to be alone, but there was no follow-up so I was fine with letting those potentials go.

What I expected from Christmas: A few skype chats, long quiet hours at home to listen to sermons, maybe seeing some of the other ex-pat families.

What I got:

• A 20-hour day, starting with a skype call at 3:30am.
• A 4-hour church service.

• The best gift ever from God (you know, other than Jesus).
• People going out of their way to come and pick me up so that I could spend time with them.

I didn't even ask God for anything for Christmas, I know that He cares for me and provides for all my needs, so it didn't even occur to me to ask Him to be with me or do anything specific on that day to meet my needs. Because He is a good and loving God, without me even asking, He ministered to me and cared for me all throughout the day and even gave me a gift that might be one of the best gifts that I've ever received.

"But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." Matthew 6:33

Even as Christians I think we spend a lot of time caring for "all these things", making sure our needs are met, seeking the fruits of the spirit, seeking good and godly things, but not seeking first wholly and only God's kingdom and righteousness. He has promised that "all these things" will be given to us when we seek Him first. How much do we really trust that?

I'm learning to seek Him wholly first and I am seeing a marked increase in "all these things" in my life. The less I am focused and caring about "all these things" the more I have of them. I didn't care about ensuring that I would be with people all day during Christmas, I was excited about quiet times with God and ended up having the most people-full and packed Christmas of my life.

Here is the kicker, if I had been looking out for myself and had ensured that I had somewhere to spend Christmas day, I would have missed out on the great present that God had prepared for me and had set into motion 4 weeks ago.

What was that gift? I'll write about it in another blog post, this one is for singing God's praises. But, as a teaser, it started with a 19 or 20 year-old boy that I had never seen before showing up at my gate saying (in Swahili);  "I've come to fetch you."  My response; "???"

Merry Christmas to you all!

Go in the stomach of an elephant

A friend recently left for the States and I heard one of the Zanaki translators say to him as a good-bye "ogeende muunda ye enzugu". Which of course, naturally means "go in the stomach of an elephant".

This is a traditional way of saying 'safe travels' to someone you are close to and really care about!

The elephant can't be killed easily by any other animal so in this language group it is the ultimate symbol of safety and security. Telling someone to travel in its stomach, well, how incredibly secure and safe must that be!

This post won't be that long, I just want to wish you all a great Christmas week and hope that you will all 'go in the stomach of an elephant' wherever you may travel during this holiday season!

Christmas luncheon

On Saturday Sarah and I had our friend Paskaria and various members of her family over for a Christmas lunch. (Several months ago I wrote about Paskaria when she came to teach Sarah and me how to cook a duck.)

We had pilau (a rice & meat dish), kachumbari (tomato and onion salad) and sodas. Pilau is quite traditional for a Christmas meal here.

After lunch we had a gift exchange. Paskaria gave Sarah and me each a kanga (a Tanzanian sarong type cloth with a saying on it). Our kangas say 'tuvumiliane tusikosane kwa jambo dogo' which roughly translated means "let us bear with one another, let us not sin against one another for a little thing".

It is traditional when giving cloth to wrap it around the recipient.

Sarah and I gave them a solar lamp, some Western candy (I warned them not to worry when the pop rocks jump around in their mouth...that is what they are supposed to do), the book of Luke in Kwaya and a beautiful piece of art that Sarah made them.

Since my family traditionally reads the Christmas story on Christmas morning I asked if we could read Luke 2, but in Kwaya. One of the little girls read the first half and I read the second half. Thankfully, this is one of the languages that I work with so I was able to make my way through it and understand what I was reading for the most part.

We then had some ice cream. This was the first time for any of them to ever have ice cream! They said that it was very sweet and if they ate it they would definitely get fat. I think that that means they liked it.

We finished our meal by playing and teaching the kids to throw a frisbee. They really enjoyed that part of the day, I even saw them getting fancy with their throws and incorporating upside-down throws as well as hammer throws. They are very talented.

It was a wonderful day of spending time with friends and blessing each other with food, company, frisbee, gifts, ice cream and friendship.

Caroling in Musoma

One of the missionary families here in Musoma carols to other ex-pats every Christmas. But, they are on furlough right now. So, a few months ago, Sarah and I realized that there was going to be a lack of caroling this year and we found this unacceptable. We decided to rectify the situation. We invited some local ex-pats to join us in caroling to the Musoma-area ex-pat families.

The band of nine carolers. 

Considering the fact that the family that is known to go a-caroling is out of town, we were able to surprise everyone when we started singing outside of their gate. We, however, were surprised when, at the second house, we walked up singing away and were greeted with the kids in tubs having an evening bath. The older kid hid himself throughout the songs while the younger sat like a king surveying his kingdom. Thankfully, their father offered to take a picture for us so that we could remember the hilarity.

We finished up the evening at Sarah's and my place with dinner, home-made eggnog and Elf.