A Merry Christmas in Sudan

Homemade Eggnog!

I enjoyed another very merry Christmas in Sudan this year.
This year's highlights included:

• Sharing Christmas Eve breakfast with my new hutmates: french toast, stewed peaches and local wild berries, homemade whipped cream and lattes! Yummy!
  
• Watching the fellas slaughter our Christmas dinner - a really fat bull.
• Seeing the church working together to selflessly donate and prepare a Christmas feast big enough to feed most of our mountaintop community!
• A clear internet connection on Christmas evening, which aloud me to chat with my family on their Christmas morning.

Church on Christmas morning -
Joshua led the congregation through each and every verse of,
"If you're happy and you know it....".
Sure, it was a bit nontraditional, but hey what can I say...

Nagishot Youth Choir

We sang a bunch, we danced a little, we prayed,
we rejoiced at the coming of the King!

Didinga men ready for a funeral
errrr... I mean church.

Church Receiving Line
Each Sunday after church, the church body lines up to shake hands.
After this friendly exchange we often dance.

And speaking of dancing... last year one of my favorite parts of my Sudanese Christmas was the dancing. Joyful, spontaneous dancing.
This year there wasn't a great deal of dancing going on, but there was a whole lot of cooking... As I briefly mentioned early, the Nagishot church hosted a HUGE community feast on Christmas day. And, believe it or not, cooking for oh, let's just say a few hundred people, is not only time consuming, but extremely exhausting.
Though the urge to dance was still there, most of us were too busy, hot and worn on out to do so. Maybe next time...

The day's menu consisted of stewed beef and ahot.
Ahot, the Didinga staple food, is made from boiled water and corn meal.
When made correctly, ahot bares a surprising resemblance to Elmer's paste.
It's not my favorite - though, what do I know?
The Didinga love it!

Full belly = Happy Child

Little ones waiting for their Christmas meal - ahot and beef stew.

Snuggles from Yaya - my favorite Christmas gift.

Adelaide's favorite gift - her new tire swing.

Sisters, Linda and Acholin, showing off their new Christmas clothes.
Didinga people do not traditionally exchange gifts on Christmas.
Rather, those who can afford it (and even those who probably can't) purchase a new outfit for the special day. In most cases, these "Christmas Clothes" replace the previous year's "Christmas Clothes" and in turn become a child's sole outfit for the coming year.

Yaya smiles in her new Christmas fatigues???
In my humble opinion, a new Christmas dress might have been a better option for this baby girl - but I will be the first to say that she looks mighty cute in her new army gear.

My new hutmates: Abbi, Trey, me and Katie.

Thanks to Trey's determination we were able to take a few house pictures without the mangy compound dog, Simba, in the foreground.

Hoping that your Christmas, wherever and however it was celebrated, was filled with the true joy of Emmanuel.
Merry Christmas from our huts to yours!