First Bolivian Christmas

Its been a year of firsts for our family, and Christmas in Bolivia is our most recent.  We decided to celebrate a little bit early with our normal traditions, so that we could extend it to our "weekend kids" without taking away from their time with family.  I am so glad we did...it was so much fun showing them what our Christmas is like and showering them with love and gifts (thanks to so many kind friends, family, and strangers!).

We wanted to do a lot for these guys because 1. We love them. and 2. They don't do anything special for Christmas (as in no presents, traditions, etc.).  But, our budget is already tight, so we knew we couldn't do it ourselves.  So, the past few months, as friends asked, we started getting glimpses of what we could do.  A friend sent a ton of great little stocking stuffer type things (toothbrushes, toothpastes, shampoos, tissues, deodorant, lotion, playing cards, etc.) and I was really excited to have that.  They were collected by the Beta Club at OGMS.  Another friend's class of students collected money to go towards gifts.  It was coming in really slow at first, so I got the impression that it might be $75 at most.  But then one of her students said he felt like God told him to give 2/3 of all his money, an amount of about $200!  (Don't worry, my friend did check with the parents to make sure they supported his decision to give that much.)  What an incredible act of generosity by a child.  So, we had a great start.  And then our home church, IBC in Hattiesburg, pastored by our dear friend Alan McCullough, unexpectedly took up special collections for our boys and our family for Christmas for a few weeks, while I had also posted on Facebook that we were looking for friends able to give towards this ministry to the boys.  Cards and checks began coming in and we were blown away by the generosity and all were could do with it for our guys.

So, last week Seth took them shopping and gave them each an amount of money to buy clothes, or whatever they really needed.  We would split the rest of the budget on fun things for them, the opportunity to take them out to eat Saturday night, some gifts for a boy's orphanage, and food to give their families.  All of that was so much more than we imagined being able to do!  We were able to get them things like cologne, soccer balls, a pair of goalie gloves, a nice cross necklace, art supplies, a skateboard, a watch, backpacks, etc.

So, Saturday after they worked at the market, our guys came over and we gathered some gifts for the boy's home (orphanage) for our guys to give out to the 12 boys there.  Some things we bought here, but we also included some things that got to us from OGMS's Beta Club (thanks to Heather Adams!).  She sent some great crayons, coloring books, and playing cards that we also added to the gift bag.  Our boys did a great job letting the kids there pull an item from the bag, and the house mom had the boys give all our guys a hug of thanks.

We played with the boys for about an hour, until it was time to head to baby washing.   Seth has started bringing several of the older guys from the boy's home to baby washing, so to lessen the complication of transporting 13 people to Plaza Principal, our 3 and myself headed home to let all the guys squeeze into a taxi and go to baby washing.

When they returned, they were starving, so we walked from our house to a great chicken place around the corner from us.  (Yep, Cruz is trying to kick Edson in the behind in the picture below...)

We ate a great dinner of chicken, rice, pasta, and fries before heading home.  Several acted kind of funny and said they had to run home for one thing or another, and left.  We still had two of the guys, so we headed home and put Elf on for the kids.  An hour or two later, the others arrived asking for wrapping paper :-)  They busily wrapped gifts for our kids they'd bought, and we got things ready for gingerbread houses.  This was very new to them, but they all had a great time joining in our tradition.  They got really creative and came up with some great houses!  Poor Lola had a time keeping hers standing, but she still had fun.

My littles all went to bed, Cruz in the girls room so our teens could use his bunk bed and room so the living room was ours to get ready for Christmas.  We eventually started another movie, but the guys started dozing off, and just decided to go ahead and go to bed. (it was about 12:30 a.m. anyways)  Seth and I got to work making the 8 piles of gifts and stockings, and finally lay down around 2 a.m.

 I was wide awake though, and thought of the gift that Edson brought that got broken soon after he got here.  I jumped out of bed and asked Seth to help me fix it.  So, around 2:30 we really went to bed.  But, I don't think I slept a wink I was so excited!  At 5:30 a.m. I decided to get up and shower and had some time in the word and in worship as I waited excitedly.  At 7, my three started trickling into the living room and began checking things out.  By 7:30 we decided it was time to wake up everyone else.

These guys are used to carefully opening gifts to save the gift wrap, but one of them asked if they should act like us (North Americans) and just rip into them.  Of course! The joy on on the faces was so wonderful.  Each guy also got a card from me, expressing how much they mean to our family and my prayer for them this Christmas.  Several came to me after Seth translated it with tear filled eyes and gave me a big hug.  They were so grateful for everything.

We promised them a good American brunch, so around 10:30 we had scrambled eggs, biscuits, and sausage.  It was delicious!

We aren't done with our Christmas fun yet, but I have to say that so far, this has been one of my best Christmas' ever.