Christmas in Africa

Merry Christmas, y'all!

While we won't receive our HHE shipment (i.e. the big shipment with the majority of our goods) until mid January, we did receive our smaller, UAB shipment just in time for Christmas.  Inside we packed a few important Christmas decorations to help us survive this season without close family and friends nearby.  It's been a great treat! Probably our most important packing decision was the last-minute purchase of a Christmas tree-scented Yankee Candle. Yum!

The garland shown below was used previously in our DC home down the staircase.  Our new staircase will require at least 5x as much. I'm hoping to grab a great deal online for additional garland after Christmas! Next year we're excited to go all-out for the holidays when my family comes to visit!

I picked up a gingerbread kit from Michael's about 3 days before we packed out.  We decorated the house this morning (Dec 24) after a healthy breakfast of JEWISH COFFEE CAKE!!! My grandma, along with rest of the Charlotte crew, sent us the greatest Christmas package we received: baked goods. My grandma's coffee cake is a Christmas staple in our family (don't ask what makes it Jewish - I have no idea - and yes, I get the irony). On Friday we were at the Embassy and I was complaining about the lack of coffee cake in my life and how it just didn't feel like Christmas without it.  Then we went to the shipping room and received our surprise care package! Perfect timing! 

Last Christmas we had two small trees flanking the entrance to our DC home. We packed out one of the little guys into our small shipment. Such a small tree required us to limit our ornament selection so we both agreed that an angel tree was most appropriate.  Each year my Grandma (yup, the same one that makes the coffee cake!) handcrafts an angel for each member of the family. When Mark and I started dating, he began receiving them, too! We packed out all of our angels and it makes for a small but very special tree.

This year my grandma made everyone an Ethiopian Farewell Angel! My grandpa cut out each of the waving bodies and my grandma painted and sewed their decor. Our maid/cook, Emme, got a kick out of this. She is from Amhara, the most traditional Ethiopian region of the country where people still dress like this every day.

We put up as many angles as we could, but we left off some of the more fragile selections.  With such a small tree, the cats can access and destroy anything they set their eyes on.  Frank has been extra destructive in the new home breaking two crystal wine glasses, one new candle holder (I found it at a pottery shop run by women with HIV/AIDS), and one vase.

This is the oldest angel I have, from 1989. 

This is the only ornament on the tree not from my grandma.  Conveniently, it's an angel too! When one of our closest friends Anna was diagnosed with cancer and the doctors thought she would no longer make it, her church held a prayer meeting. At the end of the meeting, each participant left the church with one of these angels in-hand. God worked a miracle and soon Anna will graduate college with a degree in Special Education. Anna's family sweetly sent Mark and I a great Christmas care package and included one of the angels for us to have. It's an amazing reminder of the miraculous nature of our God.  That He sent His only son to show us how to love, that He can cure everything from a bad cluster of cells to a bad heart and that He can give us a son to love and raise and hold each day. We're getting so excited to meet him! We pray that wherever you are this Christmas, you are safe and warm.  We'll be home for Christmas.. if only in our dreams.