I kept meaning to write about Christmas here but things have been crazy since then and I have not taken the time to sit down and do it. Where do I start?
We enjoyed a special Christmas service on Dec. 12 at Hillcrest Chapel called Nine Lessons and Carols. Nine scripture passages were read in nine languages...Hausa, Tiv, Zulu, Danish, Indonesian, and Arabic to name a few ad a Christmas carol was sung after each one. This evening truly reflected the diversity we have in our Hillcrest Chapel family.
On Christmas Eve we again met with others for a service at Hillcrest Chapel of singing Christmas carols around a blazing, crackling fire and listened to a special Christmas story one of the missionaries had written. We had invited a few friends to join us after the service at our house for more caroling, goodies, and coffee. The house was decorated and ready for the guests before we left for the service but we never made it back home that night.
just as the service at Hillcrest ended a friend and member of our mission security team told us that we should consider staying somewhere for the night as reports were that two bombs had gone off in our neighborhood. We called one of the hospital staff and they confirmed that bombs had gone off and they were treating many casualties. They recommended we not come back home that night as the roads were blocked and there was a lot of chaos on the street. So we joined others of our mission community for a soup supper and then stayed the night at our SIM guest house in Jos.
Christmas morning we were invited to join a few others for a brunch and then went to a missionary friend's home for lunch.. It was a nice morning but we were anxious to get back home. We decided that by late afternoon all seemed quiet so we returned home at 4:00pm. We enjoyed the evening together opening gifts and chatting with our kids in the States.
It is our tradition that we go to the hospital pediatric ward on Christmas Day to sing and pass out gifts to the patients. We were not able to do that this year but we did go on December 26. The kids were very happy to see us and although we decided not to sing our small gifts brought joy to the faces of all the children. There were many burn patients and w pray that they will heal well with no complications of infection.
So as you can see our Christmas was quite busy and VERY different this year but God was in it and blessed us.
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