Christmas in Tanzania!

We had an amazing time celebrating Christmas in Tanzania this year!  On Christmas Eve, Megan and I made our Christmas meal - pork chops, baked beans, cheesy potatoes, and peanut butter blossoms (thanks to Joann!).

It was all delicious!

Michelle

Megan

 After the meal, we talked with our dad and our oldest brother's family.  We are so thankful for the iPad one of our supporters gave us before our departure - being able to FaceTime with our family members has been absolutely amazing.  Our nieces and nephews LOVE it!!

The next morning we slept in, came downstairs to caramel rolls from scratch, had some quite time with the Lord, listened to a Mark Driscoll sermon about the birth of Jesus, watched the Nativity Story and then opened our presents from each other, Joann, and our mom, who sent a package and it arrived in perfect time!

Our table-top tree & presents!

That night we FaceTimed with our family and continued our annual tradition of acting out the Christmas Story for our nieces and nephews.  Even though we were thousands of miles away and in completely different time zones, God blessed us with a great internet connection and it was FANTASTIC!

Kiddos absolutely captivated!

Me thousands of miles away but clear as day!

Then on Friday, we celebrated Christmas together with our staff!  We invited a local restaurant to cater - Kahn's BBQ, a must-eat in Arusha!  The food was fantastic, everyone was happy, and it was a great celebration!  Megan and I read the Christmas Story from the Bible...in Swahili...pretty sure we butchered it, but everyone was so nice and said we did great.

It isn't a Tanzanian party without lots of soda!

Our workers enjoying the meal - did we mention they are all Colts fans?

 Some of our supporters contacted us and asked about ways to bless Tanzanian families for Christmas.  After much prayer, we felt the urging to bless our 24 workers.  We live life alongside these people every single day.  We have learned about their families, their character, and some of their struggles.  Megan and I talked about a gift that would bless them for an extended period of time and a gift that could even bless their entire family.  We discovered that nearly every one of our employees does not have electricity in their home, and if they do have electricity, like us, it is constantly going out, but unlike us, they do not have a generator.  Additionally, purchasing most solar lights are too expensive, so for the most part, when the sun goes down at 6:30pm every evening, our workers' homes are completely dark.  We found out one of our workers actually sells solar lanterns and so we ordered 24 of the lanterns to bring light to them this Christmas season.  Needless to say, they were ABSOLUTELY THRILLED!!! I don't think I have seen some of these people smile this much!

Lights "wrapped" in our kangas!

Enjoying the festivities!

Opening the gifts!

Such excitement for the gift of Light!

So happy for their new lights!

The lantern is also able to charge your phone!

After all the great food and opening of presents, we went outside for some group pictures!  We also asked all of our men to bring their Colts hats one of our previous teammates gave them as a farewell present!

Our workers very excited to show off their new lights - they don't quite get the whole smile for a picture thing, so Megan is usually in the background being crazy and having them say a word that has syllables making mouths look like smiles!

Our guys and their Colts hats - figured our Indiana friends and family will appreciate the blue & white

Merry Christmas to each and every one of you!