A Missionary Christmas

This one is for all the foreign missionaries and the people who love them enough to send them Oreos. 

I haven’t mentioned it before now on TNL, but for the last couple of weeks, we’ve been anticipating the arrival of yet another big black duffel. Only this time, it wasn’t one we packed ourselves. This one was chock-full with homey goodness, like taco seasoning and deodorant of a respectable size, not the miniature versions they sell in ZA for over $3. 

The bag came via a guy from our home church who joined the summer (or winter over here) Africa Trek, which is, as you can infer, a trek across several countries of southern Africa. He was kind enough bring our 49-pounder over with his own bag, both of which went MIA for almost a week. As soon as I found out it was lost, I wondered if there was any use in hoping for it. This IS Africa, after all. But God caused many people to pray for both bags, and earlier this week, they arrived in Johannesburg!

We got our bag yesterday and really went all out with a celebration of what we called “Missionary Christmas.” This is a holiday occurring at various points throughout the year when a foreign missionary is blessed with an abundance of things from back home that they never truly appreciated until they went ex-pat. 

This is our first Missionary Christmas, and we did it up right. The evening started with Todd rolling and cutting out the sugar cookie dough I made the night before. Then we got to work on homemade chicken nuggets and mashed potatoes. Delicious! After that we decorated our version of Christmas cookies and then opened our presents! Todd went through the bag first and pulled out some small items to put in my stocking: some deodorant, Reese’s Pieces, and, surprise of surprises, my apple pie spice! We used to use that in our pancakes all the time! I was shocked :) 

We got so many wonderful things...Peeps (I missed those this spring), Oreos, computer cables, Lord of the Rings DVDs that I ordered in January and arrived the day after we left the states, LITTLE DEBBIE™ CAKES (!!!), sheets for the guest bed, jeans for Todd...the list keeps going! 

Some of these things we ordered and had shipped to our parents’ homes, some things we requested, but others were completely wonderful surprises. For instance, there was a brown, zip-up, cable-knit, turtleneck sweater in the bottom of the bag that both Todd and I immediately wanted. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a tag indicating who it was for. I thought it was more like something my mom would send over, but Todd noticed that the label had a shark on it, which didn’t seem very feminine. It came down to a test of fit. We both tried it on and in the end, Todd had to admit that it fit me better...plus, he noticed the zipper was on the girl side. So, I won :) We found out later, though, that it was actually supposed to be for Todd after all. But hey, this is what happens when you have big manly shoulders, right?  

But not all surprises of the bag were happy ones. Among the things I was expecting was a set of sheets for our bed. Mom had found a set at a good price and said she would send them over, as I compare the ones in ZA to burlap. Have you ever heard of 144 thread count? 

But alas, they weren’t there. At first I was really upset. Had mom had to remove them for weight purposes? She hadn’t said anything...I sent her an email to find out and her response was as surprised as my reaction had been. Apparently, someone now has a set of nice, new, 400 thread count queen-size sheets. And it’s not me. Of all the things to steal out of a bag! I mean, there was a box with TOMTOM written right on it that should have been much more tempting. We’ve learned a valuable lesson: take the sheets out of the packaging. 

But this disappointment was not enough to dampen the Missionary Christmas spirit. After we had oo-ed and aw-ed over the spoils, we sat down to enjoy some Christmas cookies and a little Home Alone. We wish to thank our entire family for their contribution to the field :) Little pieces of home can make so much difference. 

Here’s our documentary of our first ever Missionary Christmas: