Note: Written on December 2nd:

After a crazy week we spent last Sunday mostly holed up at home, decorating for Christmas.  I’m so glad we are here for Christmas.  Last year after an awful first year at Christ School we were so desperate to be away from Bundibugyo as the school year ended that we gave up the Christmas season to travel to Kenya.  It was wonderful.  But this year we have been looking forward to being “home” for a little longer.  Within a few months “home” will look different and I have a feeling we may take a while to settle into a new normal.  Putting up stockings, playing Christmas music and lighting an advent candle while reading our Advent story each night in beds we are used to feels pretty glorious right now.

So Sunday, after a VERY boring morning at church we trekked home through intense sunshine and past palm trees to set out nativity scenes, heat some care-package hot apple cider and listen to snow-centered Christmas songs.  It’s just a different kind of Christmas mood, really.  Two days later and we’re still enjoying the Christmas music nonstop. We’ve made the missionary equivalent of sugar cookies which have already disappeared.  And we are about to start work on a recycled items advent wreath and a home made advent calendar.  I remember our first Christmas here three years ago.  The sense of deprivation, the awful simplicity.  How far we’ve come when we feel we have too many decorations and should give some away.  When the joy of not having something and not having  a store to buy it in is that we get to innovate and make it ourselves.

We’re lucky to be living these lives.