Christmas - The New Place

The author would like to apologize for the delay in updates to this Blog. It has been Christmas... and Christmas in The New Place has been at once familiar and all together different...

I will be doing several posts over the next few days replete with pictures and some anecdotal stories. We're currently enjoying the presence of our wonderful daughter "Butterfly" who after 30 some hours of travel, sleeping in airports, weather delays and lost baggage that just arrived last night...is finally here living life at The New Place with us! What a celebration that has been! Tonight we plan to go out for New Years Eve and celebrate 12 years of marriage with most of our precious children (though with holes in our hearts where our son, The Rockstar and his bride, Princess, belong.) We're taking Butterfly over to the infamous Night Market here in our metropolis of 10 million for some bargain shopping, sight seeing and certainly red cheeks from the cold!

Our Christmas was amazing and bittersweet. The Christmas program performance in front of 600 employees of the corporation who funds our school was a success! Part of the delay in posting is that I hoped to have the video ready to post here too so that you can see the performances yourself...but that will come in the days to come. The Nativity Portrayal was a hit. As I've blogged about already, most who saw the performance have no idea why Christmas is celebrated they see the holiday as a chance to get the best deals at the department stores of the year and one for a talent show displaying jugglers, belly dancers and hip hop dance crews. We believed that our school's contribution was one that really enhanced the "show."

The very next day we hosted our Christmas Party for all-comers. I'm telling you what...we had 62 people in our apartment for the fete where we served spaghetti, pizza, Christmas cookies made by the cookie baking crew, cranberry punch, cheese and crackers, etc. Every student and their parent/s from our school was in attendance! Then we had a short time of Christmas carol singing led by Daddy and followed by an introduction to the Christmas story! We were thrilled and exhausted by the event...but we believe it was another excellent opportunity to let our light so shine before men that they might see our good deeds and praise our Father in heaven!

As we were decompressing from the massive party we received a phone call from our good Brother Fred. He was calling to report to us that our dear friend here (the man with whom he had the key conversation during our Thanksgiving Dinner) had gone with him just that evening to a special meeting with about 350 locals. There were many decisions made that night...41 to be exact...and one among them was our dear friend! We have been lifting him up for 2 1/2 years! This made our Christmas here the most meaningful of all.

After Butterfly arrived early Monday morning, we set about preparing yet another massive dinner project. After school we came home to prepare a meal for 20...the entire family of our dear local friends (3 siblings, their spouses, kids and grandkids) came for dinner. For nearly all of them it was the very first time they'd ever been exposed to Western style food, our family tradition of Christmas and of course Christmas carols! We made pumpkin pies again (I'm getting pretty confident in roasting pumpkins to get the puree now) and apple crisp as well as a large pasta dish that was ample for all! We now know that next year, we must build into our budget the holiday season of opportunity with our neighbors here! We've entertained well over 100 people in these past four weeks and have shared in our home the meaning of Christmas and Thanksgiving with all of them! This is an incredible time of openness and interest and it's getting a bit easier as we become more practiced. The kids are such an incredible help with it too!

Our hearts were homesick too, of course. If only we had you here with us to enjoy this time of life! Yet, we have more of an understanding still of how we fit in here and how our enormous, conspicuous family draws people in out of curiosity first and then, we hope, for friendship. Remember all the seeds we've planted in this time...

We were blessed yesterday by our co-workers at the school admonishing us to take a "Special Holiday" today (our Dec 31st, which is a school day) so that we could enjoy more time with Butterfly. How amazing! Here our colleagues are so sensitive and caring for our family that though we never thought of it, they insisted we allow them to cover for us today so that we could have more precious time together before Butterfly leaves on Friday!

We're about to celebrate the last leg of our Christmas marathon. Then tomorrow another play day before we're have to send Butterfly back home. Please lift us up during that painful time of parting.

We have school this weekend on Sunday (yes, we are at The New Place) to make-up for our Friday holiday. We have a serious press then to conclude our semester and to give Final exams on January 12th. Our enthusiasm is high in expectation of our time for Spring Festival, which gives us 3 weeks off of school! From January 16-February 9th! We have some travel involved in the plans...I'll give you more on that later.

Off to celebrate...and then, I promise tons of pictures in the next day or two....promise!