Yesterday was such a beautiful day. We enjoyed ourselves so much. Our first Christmas in Uganda didn't feel like Christmas at all. It's amazing how much of Christmas in America is tied to cold weather and American culture. But every year, Christmas has gotten better and more "Christmasy" :-) But in addition to that, I thought yesterday was just an all around great day.
We had church in the morning. Here are the girls in their new dresses...
Some of the girls at church sang. Their singing didn't go too well, but at least they looked beautiful! haha! :)
Church was packed...over 200 people!
The church passed out sodas and mandazi (donut like pieces of cake). Our family gave all the children of the church a gift bag...a tradition of our old church in America that our kids have passed along.
Then, the girls of the church performed a ballet dance that they have been working on with Sarah, our MA. They did really well! I'm always blessed by how God can use almost any talent to bless his kingdom!
It was also Baby Divine's 2nd birthday!
After the ballet, we had a football (soccer) match...compound against visitors...Compound won! yay! Here is a picture of Dr. Kim, his wife Jina and their baby Shua watching the game.
Denise did great as a goal keeper!
Then, we spent the rest of the day up at Denise's cousin's place. A "slum" (a slum is an area where the plots are not organized and not every house is by the road...it is not a "dirty" area like American's typically picture...but it is a poorer area) area where she lived with her grandmother all of her growing up years. Denise really wanted to spend the day there, so we decided to invite ourselves and bring food with us. Christmas eve, we took our turkey, 2 chickens, rice, oil, matoke and soda up to her cousin. Her cousin cooked everything and added even more food to the meal! As is typical of entertaining visitors, they didn't have us at their house, but stuck us at a rich neighbors house. Also, when you are a visitor eating a meal, you always sit by yourself. So, this neighbor had a huge TV and we were entertained all afternoon by watching Ugandan gospel music videos and Age of Ultron dubbed over in Luganda. (fairly hilarious on both accounts).
After a while, we went around and visited all of our friends up there. Most of the children in our church come from this area, so we went from house to house saying hi to everyone.
The next two pictures make me laugh...we were teaching Pius what a "food baby" is. Christmas is a day for feasting and Pius proudly showed us his food baby. haha!
Sarah was also educating the neighbor kids on the finer points of life.
The girls, Sarah and I spent the night up there. It was a noisy night with not much sleep (The parties and drinking really got started at about 10 PM), And we may have gotten just liiiittle sleep deprived silly in the morning. (photo: courtesy of Denise)
I left with a greater appreciation for where Denise grew up, more mother-bear thankfulness in my heart that she is with us and praise to God for a wonderful day celebrating the birth of Christ...our redeemer, who redeems our lives destruction.
Wow, looking at this makes me smile. :) You all are so sweet. <3 And Christmas food babies are a must. It's awesome to see so many people crowd the compound for a Christmas service.
ReplyDelete