Our First Congo Christmas…actually, Sarah’s first Congo Christmas

As difficult as it is to be away from our families and in 90 degree weather during Christmas, we managed to make our Christmas celebration very special. We are sure that most of you would like to know how we celebrated with our friends here.

This is our third, married Christmas and one of our favorite things to do around Christmas time is buy a tree and spend an evening decorating it, just the two of us. Since we had no luck finding a pine tree here in Gemena, I (Sarah) decided to surprise Sam with this Christmas tree while he was gone for a couple hours on Christmas Eve morning.

That night we had our own Christmas celebration where we ate a taco dinner (not exactly a traditional Christmas meal, but one of our favorites), finished decorating the Christmas tree (with markers) while listening to Christmas music on our computer and watched the movie Elf. We had spent most of the afternoon decorating our living room and baking yummy treats with Robert …Ginger Snaps, blueberry muffins, bread and chocolate cake.

We opted out of the 8pm-12am Christmas Eve service at our local church but Sam attended the Christmas morning service that started at 9:30am and ended at 1pm. We joined Mowa’s family for a short time of singing, praying and sharing a meal together after the service. Then we headed over to our friend, Mama Francoise’s, house for our second big meal of the day. Francoise is one of the several surrogate mothers we have here in Congo. When she invited us over for Christmas she told us that you are supposed to be with you mothers on Christmas and since our mothers aren’t in Gemena and she is our Congolese mother, we must eat at her house. We gladly accepted her invitation because she is a lovely woman and eating out her house is as tasty as dinning at a restaurant.

We were delighted that it started to rain here in the afternoon, even though it is the beginning of the dry season. Everything cooled down significantly for the rest of the evening and we geared up for our third big meal of the day at the Ekstrand’s house.

We ate canned ham, scalloped potatoes, salad, Swedish meatballs, cheese and crackers, green bean casserole and even had Christmas cookies and ice cream for dessert. The evening ended with af “White Elephant” gift exchange and we were both pleased with the gifts we ended up with…a bag M&Ms and a mystery puzzle game.

On Christmas Eve, the two of us talked about how we do miss our families and wish we could have been with them for at least one, snowy day. But we are so happy to be here, where we are supposed to be, with each other, in the Lord’s hands. And we are grateful for the friends we have here, who are starting to feel like family. The Lord knows what we need and it is our delight to trust Him and praise Him…especially for the new life He has given to us.