After the festivities at church and the Nayiri’s palace we gathered with several missionary families at one of the hospital guest houses for lunch. A Catholic missionary couple from Nakpanduri and Pat and Peggy Ozment from Tamale joined us.
Everyone brought their finest American foods. We had such gourmet and rare foods as a canned ham, gravy from a US mix pack, green bean casserole – with real almond slices, a jar of cranberry sauce, dill pickles, jelly beans, pecan pie – with real pecans, and a cake and cookies made with real butter (not Blue Band)!
It really made me appreciate Christmas dinner a lot more knowing that everyone had brought something special to share that they could have kept for themselves. Also helping me to appreciate God’s blessings was the fact that Trey and I had visited Koko Duu earlier in the day.
After lunch (by now it was almost 3:30pm) we opened gifts as a family. Christmas was much simpler this year – and I really liked it that way. I gave Heidi one present – a silver bracelet I bought from a Tuareg in Burkina Faso. She gave me one present – a Boyz2 painting of me taking a photograph. We gave Trey one present – some wooden puzzles made by disabled artisans in Ouagadougou. Trey had several other gifts from missionaries and doctors and this year he really enjoyed unwrapping them.
Heidi and Trey napped in the afternoon and I returned to the hospital with Dr. Faile to distribute more cokes to workers. In the evening we gathered with the Nalerigu missionaries once again to exchange gifts amongst each other and eat leftovers from lunch. I made a slideshow of the hospital photos I’ve taken and we watched that while listening to Sufjan Christmas music.
As I mentioned before, Christmas was simple – and we liked it that way. When you look at the actual nativity story in the Bible and push all the commercialized, Americanized, superfluous stuff aside you get this simple story of salvation:
At a simple time, in the simple setting of a stable, a simple young girl engaged to a simple carpenter gives birth to Christ who gives us a simple way to be free from the complex problem of sin.
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel! He has taken care of his people and has set them free” – Luke 1:68
Read “Christmas in Nalerigu” Parts 1 & 2