Christmas in Africa

Season's greetings from the other side of the world!  I hope each of you had a wonderful celebration with family and friends.  I feel incredibly blessed this Christmas for so many reasons.  I have a wonderful 'family' here in Buea that consists of other missionaries and volunteers from all over the world who also were unable to spend Christmas with their real families.  We had a good time together and thanks to skype I got to be a part of Christmas back home as well!  The best part of this Christmas is knowing that I am exactly where God wants me to be, there is an unfathomable joy in following God and allowing him to do amazing and unbelievable thing in my life!

Christmas morning started out like most Sunday mornings here with an early morning (6:30) run with Richard. Then we made a yummy Christmas brunch complete with some delicious imported treats such as peanut butter, apple sauce, and syrup!  Then we set to cooking for the next meal!

All this past week at campmeeting I was inspired by the women's abilities to cook over a fire.  So when it came down to cooking our huge pot of potatoes for mashed potatoes Mary and I decided to give it a shot!  Since the pot was so big we knew it was going to take a lot of gas to cook on our stove, plus we have such limited burner space... so we scrounged up some things to start a fire... it's so humid here that nothing is ever really dry so my pathfinder skills were put to the test! (Thanks for the farmer matches Janae!)

After a lot of fanning, dry leaves, some paper and a lot of patience we got it going!  (here I'm pretending to have "African hands" it's crazy, the ladies here just pick up the lid of a pot that has been over the fire for hours with bare hands!  all of my skin would stay on the lid if I tried that!)

Boiling!

I thought we might have to bring them in and finish the cooking process on a "real burner" but they turned out perfectly!  Mashed potatoes cooked over a fire and mashed by hand Mmmmm :)

Some of the girls :) (LtoR) Trixy (doctor), Kim (volunteer from Germany), Kathrine (local friend), Sarah (SM from CA), Me and Mary :) (ND SMs).

Nate found a "snowman in a can" RANDOMLY at some little shop here!  you mix up the 'snow' and the kit was complete with little eyes, carrot nose, and a ribbon scarf!

Sad leaning little snowman!  It must have either been to hot so he was melting, or not warm enough because the snow wasn't sticky enough!

of course, with snow around, even if it's only a small bowl full of silicon snow...

it's not gonna take long to start a "snowball" fight! (Nate started it!) What great fun!

Christmas meal

Desserts!

the gang! :) 4 continents represented!

This is a picture I stole from the family blog, this is skyping with my Flemmer family in ND on Christmas Eve :) I got passed around the room on the computer, was so great to get in on a little of Christmas with my family!  Then last night I got to watch my family open presents at home!!  What a blessing technology can be!