NLCH Christmas 2007

It's tough trying to find where to start in describing what Christmas is like here. It's certainly different than anywhere else and our memories of Christmases here will always be very special to us. This post would be too long if we tried to talk about everything that goes on here... from getting all of the presents ready, to all of the activities of Christmas Eve night and Christmas morning. Our friends and coworkers, Lee and Staci, did a good job of giving a summary of everything on their blog here. Rather than try and do that again, I'll just talk about a few of the highlights. Then, Kara may want to fill in more details later.

Our first highlight and one of the things that will make this Christmas so memorable for us was being able to watch the three of our boys who celebrated Christmas for the first time with us: Juan David is the little guy in the picture above, and in the pictures below to the left, Javier and his brother Eliseo. On Christmas Eve, I was giving Juan David a piggy back ride and asked him what he had done for Christmas in the past. His answer was, "They gave me a little motorcycle toy and we ate cookies." It's good to know that he celebrated Christmas with his family before coming here, yet it was also exciting to know that he'd never seen anything on this scale before.

Javier's and Eliseo's story is different. They'd probably never had much of any kind of Christmas before. They were both really excited in the days leading up to the 24th, especially as they saw presents start showing up under the tree. I stood near these boys as presents started being handed out so that I could see their reactions as they got their first gifts. I expected pure excitement, like in the picture of Juan David at the top. They were excited allright, and Eliseo's reaction was similar to Juan David's. He was so excited about his presents that he took them back to his room, laid them out on his bed and slept with them there all night! Javier's reaction, however, made me just about lose it right there in the middle of more than 40 kids opening their presents at the same time.

His first present came to him and he took forever to open it. I thought it was just because, having never done it before, he didn't know it was okay to just tear into it. After seeing him be so careful with other presents as they came, though, we started to realize that he was doing that because he even liked the wrapping paper so much that he wanted to keep pieces of it. Staci said that as he sat on the floor unwrapping one of his gifts (really slowly) that she saw him tearing up because he was so overwhelmed and happy.

As I watched these little guys be so excited about some simple presents, I couldn't help but think of Jesus' saying, "If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!" Sure, we can say that Christmas is about Jesus and not about the presents; but watching these boys' faces as they got some new clothes and toys... there wasn't much doubt that Jesus was heavily involved in the process and pleased with the result.

Another highlight was that Kara's parents brought down all of the gifts to fill the kids' stockings to open on Christmas morning. The two of them packed their own things in one small carry-on, while bringing about 240 lbs. worth of luggage full of things from people in their church to fill the stockings. It was a ton of work on their part and from their church, but the kids got some really good stuff.

Obviously things fell into place for the church to be able to help in this way this year- with us being here and Tim & Linda coming down to visit and being able to bring all of the things with them. But thanks to their willingness to help out and lavish these kids with gifts from people whom they'll probably never even meet, just in the effort to reassure these kids that they're not forgotten or rejected but children of the King... again, I just can't help but to believe that Jesus is pleased with that church's Christmas offering this year.


In case you want to see more NLCH Christmas pictures, we've uploaded a bunch of them here.