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Our first Christmas on Eleuthera (well except for almost in 2001). We thankfully had Kari and her boyfriend Jimmy with us to round out the festivities, and make the island feel more like home.
One of the major reasons we chose to stay rather than travel was so that we could focus more of the holiday on the incarnation of Christ and the reason for celebrating this holiday. The usual travel schedule gets somewhat grueling and its easy to lose sight of whose birthday we’re celebrating.
This year at our service before Christmas, Micah got up front to sing “Away in a Manger.” He was a little timid, not sure he practiced enough, but he did pretty good. It was super cute to see him all dressed up in his suit and standing in front of the church.
Even with the focus on baby Jesus and the lack of American materialism, we still had a ton of presents. And a special thanks to everyone who mailed us gifts and made our Christmas abroad feel so much like we’re surrounded by loved ones. Micah got a whole table full of new toys. Mostly new cars, some remote controlled cars, and a spider man silly string sprayer… yeah we had fun with that one!
Emily got me a new mandolin – totally didn’t expect that, and Kari and I Skyped with mom back in Wisconsin and we played a little trio of Silent Night with all our instruments – isn’t technology amazing! Speaking of technology, Jimmy’s dad looks exactly like Santa Claus, in fact he works as Santa all over. Well Jimmy convinced his dad to get on the computer and say Merry Christmas to Micah and even asked him about the presents he got. Micah was really surprised and it was a fun little gimmick like icing on a cookie.
We all had the best time together and we’re most of all thankful for God giving us Jesus to become one of us and live among us to reveal the Father to us. We’re thankful to all of our supporters who manifest the love of God to us as we serve Him on Eleuthera.