Christmas Polka-dots

It has been an interesting Christmas season so far. We've had a couple of opportunities to hand out gifts, food and clothing to some very poor people. We've experienced the church's Christmas program, the communities firecracker fiesta and some traditonal and not-so-traditional Christmas festivities.


We found out on Christmas eve that Mexicans celebrate Noche buena (Beutiful Night) more than Christmas day. Noche Buena is on Dec 24th. It started for us with Church from 2-5 (that was the advertised time, the reality was 3-6!). We had about an hour long service with songs, skits, a short messag and some dances followed by supper. Supper was a North American version with turkey, instant mashed potatoes, dressing and vegies. There was also Birria (a soup made from a cheap cut of meat, tomatoes, garlic and Chili peppers- you season it with lime, onions and cilantro just before you eat it). Traditonally folks will have Tamales (corn flour dough placed on rehydrated corn husks or banana leaves, filled with meat, a slice of potatoe, sometimes an olive, or peppers and / or cheese. You tie the husks together and steam them for quite some time until done. One family we visited with had made a pot of them. The pot was too big to fit on a burner on the stove ( it would likely sit on all 4 burners) so they cook it outside over a fire. They had probably over 100 of the tamales cooked. It being too big for a fridge (besides they had 2 more huge pots filled with birria and Atole (sauce for the tamales made with milk, chocolate and cornflour) they just kept everything out and warmed it up as they needed it. These huge pots of food would feed their family of 4 for a week as well as anyone else who came by to visit.

Noche Buena is about families being together, usually around a bonfire (you wouldn't believe how many bonfires we saw!) and fireworks, with firecrackers. Traditionally the group hangs out until midnight when they will have a huge meal of turkey, tamales, birria, pozole etc. etc. And at midnight the bulk of the firecrackers and fireworks go off... it was quite loud!

We did not know this until that night, so we had invited a family over to our house for Christmas day supper, which seemed odd to them. This is a family from Southern Mexico who are here because of their daughters ailment. they can receive better medical treatment here, and have even been helped by hospitals in the USA. So we had 6 folks over (gramma, grampa, momma, daughter, aunty and cousin) and enjoyed tamales, turkey and the trimmings.

We also had Mexican fruit ponche. I found a couple of recipes on the internet and mixed them together to make my own. It is a hot punch with crabapples, granny smith apples, guavas, raisins, dried plums, orange peel, piloncillo (processed sugar cane) brown sugar, cinnamon sticks and jamaica (dried hibiscus flowers). It was good. Really good. They could not believe that a gringo had made this ponche. The one lady says to us- "It's better than mine!" to which her sister replied-" She's right- it IS better than hers!!" We had some good laughs, shared recipes and dessert until it was time to take them home.

About a week ago, Elijah woke up one day with flea bites (Click here to read that story) And we had quite the flea killing ceremony afterwards. Well, on Boxing Day (Dec. 26 for Canadians) Jacob woke up with similar spots, only with a cold too and a very tired- sick feeling. It was chicken pox (Jake calls them his polka-dots). It turns out this is what Elijah had, only he had such a mild case, it didn't seem to us to be chicken pox. He went about life as usual without even getting very itchy! If it wasn't for some spots on his face, you'd never know anything was different with Elijah. Jacob, though, has a pretty bad case. He spent most of this afternoon in bed, has a cough and drippy nose and it covered with the little itchy spots from head to toe. We can only assume that Caleb is next. We just hope it isn't until after the new years! We were given some free passes to Legoland that expire that day and we were going to go celebrate legoland new years eve- they have fireworks etc at 6pm (new years in LEGOLAND!). We're praying for healthy kids for that day- the kids have been looking forward to this...

SCHOOL.

I haven't found out yet. if enough donations have come in for us to register the kids in school by January 8th. If you could be in prayer with us for that. We are going to need about $1000.00 to pay for the registraiton fees, school uniforms and tuition for the first month. We appreciate your prayers in that regard, I'l update you by January 8th!

LANGUAGE LEARNING

We've hit kind of a wall with the language learning. We've got enough to "get by". Language learning is always done on a "need to know" basis. Meaning if you NEED to learn more, you will. Which is why new immigrants to Canada get by on so little English when they live in little communities of their fellow ex-pats. They get enough language to do day to day stuff and then coast by on the rest. Frankly, we need to need to learn more. With the kids in school for 8 hours a day, it'll give us the opportunity to be more involved with people somewhere, we just need to find out where! There are some possibilities we are going to be looking into for the new year.

Here is a list of specific prayer requests!

PRAYER:
- School. $1000.00 by January 8th for tuition, uniforms, and registration fees.
- Pray for the boys if they do get to go to the school- new school, new friends and the issues surrounding that!
- Language. Pray as we examine options that we would have wisdom to know what to do.
- Ministry opportunities- Pray that we'd have the opportunities to be a blessing as we are learning Spanish.
- Homesickness- We've been away from family at Christmas for years, we've lived in Victoria so lived through green Christmases, but being in Mexico means no familiar carols, no Christmas sermons (that we understand well enough yet), no Advent and not much "familiar" about our holidays. That has caused a wee bit of homesickness here. Please pray with us about that!
- Chicken pox- Pray for Jaob as he gets through them, pray for Caleb that he doesn't get them till after Dec. 31- or that he gets a mild case. The boys have been looking foward to using our free tickets to Legoland!



Thank you for partnering with us! We appreciate you and the part you play in this ministry!

Until next time,

Mike for the family