Merry Christmas one

A very very merry Christmas to all who read this. Christmas has come and gone, we hope yours was as busy and happy as ours was. We had a very busy lead up and I see that it has been two weeks since I last wrote.
To bring you up to date; we bought a new oven, almost twice the price of the previous one but it is worth it as it cooks much better. On Saturday before Christmas we went with the young missionaries to KPC (not KFC, but Kampala Pentecostal Church) now known as Watoto Church to see their Christmas cantata. What a spectacular show! Fantastic music and dancing with a choir of over 100 decked out in black and white, it was absolutely stunning. Afterwards we went to Spectrum, a restaurant for a pre-Christmas dinner, buffet style which I thoroughly enjoyed (especially the pork chops and we were told we could get food as many times as we liked). The first photo shows the group before we ate.
In the week leading up to Friday we spent each morning with the Sunday school children preparing our pageant for the Christmas service. It was good seeing it develop from chaos, to a shambles, to Ok but..., to a great performance on the day. Marilyn's sunday school class also made a manger scene which you can see in the second photo.


Marilyn also helped with some small groups to make some special biscuits for Christmas Day. We also farewelled, sadly, the three volunteers, Rebekah, Ester and Margret. They have been absolutely great and we have enjoyed getting to know them.









Christmas Day finally arrived, I had to get up at 4am to tell the bigger boys that it was NOT time to wake up yet, and eventually we got up around 7am. We had wrapped the boys' Christmas clothing up and another parcel with a couple of small gifts in so they enjoyed opening those. It was delightful watching Richard as this was the first time he had ever had presents. We also gave each of the boys a Bible or a book of Bible stories. We had bought these with some money that people had sent us during the year.
The third picture is of the boys in their Christmas clothing ready to go up to the home for breakfast.
After breakfast it was time for the church service which Marilyn and I led. As mentioned earlier the pagaent went off very well with a cast of 30 children and some great costumes (especially the masks) as you can see in the fourth photo.


Then it was time for morning 'coffee' and some dances by the children up until lunchtime. After lunch Marilyn & I along with Reny and some other aunties took the children for some games (at least we tried to, they don't listen very well at times). We were kept on the go all the time.
Then it was time for presents. Unfortunately the weather was overcast with showers (my Dad would have said "it's a grey day Madge") and the children couldn't get outside so presents were given out inside. What a noise!!! Each child was given five gifts, not all at once but spread out, so it took over an hour to distribute them. It was lovely to see the delight on their faces, especially the little ones.
Christmas dinner was then a barbeque with chicken, meat patty, sausage, bun, coleslaw, chapati and a soda.
We arrived home about 7.30 having had a really good day. Ezra gave us a Christmas present of a dry bed, and best of all we heard from Jen that she and Scotty had a good Christmas too, with about six others who Jen cooked for.
The Dutch have a tradition whereby they celebrate two days of Christmas, so more about 2nd Christmas on the next blog.