Curacao Christmas

What a special Christmas season we had as a family here in Curacao! Although we are far away from any family members and we have missed them, God has graciously filled our hearts with family and friends here, who made Christmas especially memorable.

I read a quote in God With Us , a book meant to turn our hearts to the real meaning of Christmas, and it said: "When we become adults, and the wide-eyed wonder of childhood has passed, we need to replace what was once magical with something much more meaningful."  While this is so true, as parents we want our kids to focus on the meaningful right from the beginning, while still having a sense of joy and wonder.  This is especially true at Christmas.  Our whole Advent season (though at times rushed or hectic like most families) had a sense of awe about it as we went through our Jesse Tree Advent Devotional with ornaments each day.  We are so grateful for this and pray that each Christmas, our family grows to make more of Christ and less of ourselves.

Our Advent season was filled with lots of visits and activities....making cut-out snowflakes with the kids at Siloam, having Nathan and Ezra over to help decorate cookies, making twelve batches of cookies (in a tiny kitchen...whew!) and delivering them to neighbors, tasting lots of good, international food, (we had Dutch food, German cookies, Indonesian meatloaf, Romanian cabbage rolls, Antillean tamales - called hallacas - and Caribbean jerk chicken!) and enjoying fellowship with our friends here.

On Christmas morning, we put our last Advent ornament on the tree, opened gifts and had a special birthday cake breakfast for Jesus!  Then...it was off to Siloam for the big Christmas day feast.  We had a wonderful time and it felt like a big family gathering for us.  The climax was being able to pass out all of the gifts we'd collected for the kids and adults.  Jack and George did such a wonderful job of helping give gifts, never asking for one of their own while each of the Siloam kids received theirs.  We had given each kid a Christmas card with a family photo in it...and I couldn't believe how excited the kids were to have a picture of our family!  We are grateful to those in my family who helped with the Christmas gifts - Gentry, Morgan family and Turley family - you blessed these kids and us, too!

I'd like to share a special story.  As we gathered the gifts and wrapped, we realized we had one extra gift - a small, soft baby doll with mocha skin.  We had enough dolls for all of the girls, so I was wondering who I could give this one to.  Last Sunday at church we found out that a new baby girl had arrived at Siloam - little Xyzah - maybe 3 or 4 months old and just returning from Holland, where she had open-heart surgery.  Her family is unable to care for her, so Herman and Bep joyfully took her in.  When I held that little one in my arms last week, I knew that the baby doll was for her.  God knew in advance that there would be an additional child at Siloam on Christmas!  And while she wouldn't have known or cared about receiving a gift, Bep and the others were touched that she was remembered - the Lord cares about the least of these, that is for certain!

So...enjoy our video montage of Christmas pictures.  We hope you can get a good sense of what it was like for us here....our hottest Christmas ever!  (Josh figured out while talking to Shane and Raleigh in North Dakota last night that there was a 107 degree difference in our temperatures - 87 degrees here and minus 20 there!) It may have been hot....but our hearts couldn't have been warmer anywhere else this Christmas.  Thank you, Lord, for the gift of your Son! 

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