"...I thought they were sprinkles!"

Have I introduced you to Anna yet? Sheesh, time flies. Anna arrived in late October, a new member of our team in Bundibugyo – here to teach missionary kids and various other things - in time to overlap for a few weeks with Sarah before she left the field in early December. In any case, you should know that Anna has a way with words ☺ Somehow summing up entire holiday seasons in a couple phrases! “Those are bugs?! I thought they were sprinkles!” came out of her mouth a few days ago and it pretty well sums up Christmas in Bundibugyo. It was Christmas night, we had trekked down the hill to the duplex from the Myhre’s where we had spent the latter part of the afternoon and evening, and we were putting leftover food away, including some spectacular Christmas cookies Carrie had made, complete with red and green sprinkles (thanks Ash!). After they sat outside on the pizza table throughout the evening, ants and other bugs had began to celebrate Christmas by starting in on Carrie’s cookies, and she found them as she began to put them in a Tupperware for safe keeping overnight in the light of the kitchen. So, Carrie remarked about the bugs in the cookies as I was putting other leftovers in the fridge, and Anna replied with this brilliant summation as she studied the cookies on the counter after eating a piece of one.

- lights for the tree we bought at Uchumi that supposedly had 8 settings of various speeds and patterns of blinking/still but in actuality only had several not really all that different versions of seizure inducing blinking…oh well - lights are lights! we enjoyed them nonetheless (without any seizures I might add)
- Christmas is usually during dry season, and when we drove into the district with Carrie 4 days before and the entire back of my blue Capri pants were saturated with sweat, I was sure it had arrived! I was excited that at least it meant we would be able to eat Christmas Eve dinner on the back porch and maybe even Christmas breakfast, but alas, it rained all evening/night from Christmas Eve into Christmas morning…oh well – we ate a spectacular Asian meal Bundibugyo style, and then enjoyed a spectacular Black Forrest cake ala Scott Will for dessert by candlelight in front of the tree
- Carrie was sad that she wasn’t going to be in Bundibugyo for a Sunday church service and I comforted her by informing her that there would be church on Christmas, “one of the best services of the year.” Then ALL of the songs the congregation sang at the beginning of the service were Christmas carols that no one sings any other time of year, so they haven’t memorized them from repetition, and most people can’t read to learn the words, so they were sung slowly and awkwardly by a few…oh well – following these songs were the choirs, everyone decked out in their Christmas dresses/suits – always fun to watch and listen to
- We did rounds on the ward on Christmas Eve and the last kid we saw is an HIV + kid who it seems is dying, has not been conscious for the weeks she has been admitted for, whose mom must have known her status but was in denial and therefore didn’t get any prenatal care with her pregnancy with the younger sibling because she didn’t want to get tested…the mom refusing to have an NG tube placed in her daughter for hydration and formula feeding for caloric intake, but after I kneeled down on the mat she was sitting on with the child and explaining why we thought it was the best thing to do, she agreed. She then asked how long it would take to make her child well again, and I told her that there was no guarantee that anything we did was going to be able to make her well, but that this was the best option and we needed to try. My American ideal of everything needing to be well and good on Christmas was busted wide open…oh well – it made me realize yet again just how good the news of the birth of Jesus – Immanuel, God with us – really is, and how the harsh realities of life should make Christmas that much sweeter. And it did.

The bugs in the Christmas cookies – when you expect them to be sprinkles and they’re actually bugs it makes the ones that actually have sprinkles and not bugs taste that much better! And so goes life. Thanks Anna!