THREE CHRISTMASES

First, I want to introduce you to our daughter, Heather, and her family, Wade, Stewart 10, Kyle 8, Blair 4.  The best Christmas gift ever was to have them come to visit us for a month over Christmas.  The 2 girls with them are Eang 11, next to Heather and her sister Eye.  Eang is the family's sponsored child at Place of Rescue.  Eang did not leave Heather's side from the moment she discovered Heather was her "Mom".  Very precious time for Eang.

Now I want to introduce you to our landlords AKA our Cambod

ian family.  Paul is originally from Chicago, but has been in Cambodia for 13 

years; therefore, he qualifies as Khmer to us.  Sotheary is a true blue,born here Khmer.  These are their children, Alan 10 and Anika 3.  They've all taken us into their hearts and made us feel as though we belong in Cambodia.  You'll be hearing a lot about these two families in the Christmas part of our blog.

Our first Christmas was with Daughters of Cambodia.  Ruth, their Director, invited us to share in their "unpolished" (her words) celebration program.  Heather, Blair and I went and were so imp

ressed with these girls who have come so far from their tragic past.  They entertained us with singing, recitation of Scripture, breakdancing - yes! they praised God through their breakdancing!  As they sang Silent Night in Khme

r, one of the girls closed her eyes and sang with such feeling, I had tingles going through me.  It was fun to see them so excited, giggling, twittering and laughing at each other esp

ecially those made up as men for the upcoming pageant.  It was as meaningful to us as any "polished" performance one could see. 

Our second Christmas was at Place of Rescue.  Our family was very excit

ed to go out and meet their sponsored girl, Eang - you've met her at the beginning of the blog.  The 3 hour program began and again all the children, Moms, AIDS moms and staff were so excited.  There were hugs all around for all of us - there's no lack of love from those kids.   

  
First was the beautiful classical Khmer dance of blessing.  The girl in the blue dress on the left is our beautiful Ny whom

 Stew and I have sponsored for about 5 years.  She calls us Mom and Dad and considered Heather's boy's her 'brothers'.

The program ended with the Christmas story done in dance and song format.  It was so beautiful and moving to see all of the children taking part.  It was also very refreshing to see the true meaning of Christmas played out before our eyes.

This was followed by a huge Cambodian feast - soup, curry, rice (of course), bread, and platters of fruit.  To work off the delicious meal everyone started to dance - Khmer dancing is like line dancing, so it looks easy to do, but do not be deceived - it is not easy to get the rythmn, footwork and handmoves all going the correct way at the same time.  Some pretty funny sights.  Our carload was tired and we left them all happily dancing the night away!

THREE FAMILY CHRISTMAS

Christmas Eve began with Paul and Stew taking 

the kids door to door delivering 

cookies made by Sotheary to wish all of their neighbours a Joyeux Noel.  Our 3 boys had brought mini sticks along hoping to round up enough boys or girls to play a little street hockey so they handed them out as well.  Can you imagine the look on the faces who had NO idea what these sticks were for and 

neither side could speak the other's language.  I am sure the neighbours went inside shaking their heads, but our kids sure had fun.

Following supper, the kids were all allowed to open 1 gift which has been preordained by the parents - always a new pair of pj's!  They quickly got into them and went to bed in great anticipation as to whether Santa would know that they were in Cambodia.  They were not diappointed.  Morning dawned and there were three stockings filled to overflowing.  There were some real surprises for all the boys as is evidenced by Blair's delight at getting an Omnitrix.  Don't ask - it's something to do with Ben Ten, I think.  He loved that huge watch affair that made lots of noise and even found a little boy across the street who had one.  Sotheary let Blair out of our gate and took him over to compare their valued possessions.

After breakfast and prior to opening gifts, Paul played his guitar while we sang Christmas carols.  Each of the older boys read a portion of scripture from Luke and then we sang the carol related to it.  It was so nice.

The only down thing was that first Wade, then Heather followed by Kyle were stricken by the malicious GI problem.  Some meals were missed, but it didn't stop them from doing anything.  Actually, they gained from it.  More on that in the next blog tomorrow.