Ahh... back online!! Merry Christmas!
I have internet in my home...yee-haw!!! and Praise the Lord!!! the perfect Christmas present!
I had a wonderful Christmas! After making a big salad for Christmas dinner with the Brouwers and Weeklys, I headed over to Ibungilo for their Christmas service. I was 30 min late, and why was I worried? I temporarily forgot what continent I was on. :-) Things didn't get started until 45 min after I got there. It was a great celebration. The ladies of the church had met Christmas eve morning to clean and decorate for the service. There were lights, flowers, and big palm branches.
The Ibungilo choir sang, along with the children's choir from TX, and Pastor Zephania from another village church preached. After the 3-hour service, everyone went outside to witness some baptisms and then enjoy a big meal together. I had to sneak away (not really possible for a white person) before the baptisms though. :-(
The Brouwers, Weeklys, and I enjoyed a huge turkey with almost all the fixin's. (the price of the canned cranberry sauce wasn't worth it, especially after our extremely expensive turkey! - thank you to those who gave extra Christmas gifts!!) We even had pumpkin pie! The pumpkins here look more like watermelons, elongated, and green and white-striped; but they still taste like pumpkins! Tammy had been looking for them in the big market downtown since before Thanksgiving. The Lord answered prayer...the week before Christmas pumpkins came to Mwanza! After dinner we opened presents, talked, and played games. We all reserved different times to call home using the Weeklys new webcam. My time-slot was midnight. :-) Such fun to chat with everyone and see them for the first time in almost 4 months.