A new country but an old celebration

As we are only 19 days away (haha 20 days for most of you) away from celebrating the birth of Christ, I have had some random thoughts cross my mind. When you have kids, you look at them in a way that only a parent can. As I was sweeping my house yesterday (oh man does it take FOREVER) I was thinking of Christ's coming as a man and as a baby. When I look at Addy or even Si and Gwen, it is SO MUCH weirder (is that a word?) to think of Christ in that way. The vulnerability of it all. Not only did Christ become man but He became BABY and then CHILD and so on. What would that have looked like? I am bummed that we don't have any Biblical stories of His childhood ( I am sure there is a very good reason God decided to keep that out of our Scriptural Canon). What a sacrifice. What a bringing of such lowliness. Amazing.

Our Christmas will look a bit different this year. Today we are going out into the yard and making a Christmas tree out of palms. I am looking forward to the new traditions that we will be able to start here. It is a struggle for our family to keep traditions. We don't have any real concrete ones that we will be bringing from America. So we are now free to make up new ones and think of old ones to keep.

I DO need to put up some lights and some small decorations though as it DOES NOT feel like the Christmas season at all. There are stores here with a ton of Christmas decorations up and what not but it is all Santa stuff. Cannot say that I even remember seeing any manger scenes etc...but I haven't been looking too hard. I am excited to have some of our own decorations (like my manger scene) when we are able to bring a container over.

We will be starting to focus more on stories to the kids about Christ's birth. Si has been asking about heaven more lately so that has been exciting. It is fun to hear the concepts that a four year old can come up with.

I am working on getting some videos made to add to our youtube.com account. Make sure you check that out in a couple days. The next ones I will be loading with be LARGE files as they are interviews that Houghton did with a Ni-Van guy while on his Ambrym trip. You will love watching it! So hang in there while I get it ready to view and then load it (this takes forever!)

Missing you all and praying Christ will be real to you all.