This year our Christmas ‘tree’ was made out of recycled tuna tins and the left-over scraps of material from the 300 + face masks we made for the hospital staff earlier in the year.
We tried to make Advent meaningful to Mr-almost 5 and Miss 2. Each day we read a small scripture, or a meaningful Christmas book. Last year we started the gift tradition for the children, giving them, “something to play with, something to wear, something to read and something to share.”
Our aim was to take the focus off getting presents and putting it on Christ, the greatest gift. We want them to understand Christmas as a time of sharing with others. Especially those in need, or who are lonely or hurting. And by God’s grace we want them at an early age to discover the joy of focusing less on themselves and more on others.
You see, the area that we live in has a mixture of animists (those who worship gods in nature or traditional witch doctors), Muslims and Christians but everyone here likes to celebrate Christmas together. We love the opportunity that Christmas brings to share Christ with our community. This year the children, as part of their own Christmas gifts, received hundreds of cookies to go and share with the patients who remained in hospital over Christmas.
It took 2 days of baking and packaging to make close to 400 small packets of these cookies, dates and sweets for the patients. Ladies from church gathered to help. We mixed almost 20kg of flour with freshly ground spices, baking powder, oil, milk powder and water. We cooked under the tops of old oil barrels and in our clay pot oven and we made well over a thousand cookies. The children were present whilst baking, but mostly helping to consume rather than bake.
Early Christmas morning, the children received their ‘something to wear’ after we had a special breakfast and called family. They wore these new clothes to church. When we got home from church they received their ‘something to play with’ and ‘something to read’ which occupied them whilst we did the finishing touches on the Christmas lunch. Then after lunch they received their ‘something to share’ – lots of bags of cookies – for the guests present at the lunch and for all the hospital patients.
Then off we went. We loaded the little red wagon with the bags of cookies and treats and the projector and trundled off to the hospital.
When we reached the hospital my Joshua man set up the projector whilst a few friends from church together with the children and I went and distributed the cookies to all the inpatients.
We were so proud of Mr. Brave, overcoming his fears and confidently walking up to patients in their beds, shaking their hands and giving them the cookie bag with the Arabic Christmas greeting. He was very enthusiastic. Miss Joy was not too sure about this cookie sharing thing however and just held tightly onto one cookie bag whilst walking bed to bed. I think she was afraid she would miss out on eating cookies later, not realizing that there were still cookies left at home for her.
The beautiful thing is that we didn’t only get the chance to share cookies, we also had the opportunity to share Christ. After the cookie distribution we invited patients to come and sit on mats and chairs and watch the Jesus film and learn about the greatest gift of all.
Love Hope
Hallelujah in the Mountains 