It's Our Most Busiest Day of the Year (yes, I know it's bad grammar)

Some of you may know that our Christmas was very different this year and we didn't open presents til the day AFTER Christmas. I told that to my friend and she said, "WHAT?" and a long explanation followed.  I'll try to give you one, and you can see the pictures!



Christmas day dawned hot and humid, with layers of dust over the tables and furniture, and piles and piles and piles of juice boxes, cookies, soda cans, and bags all over our table.

This is how we ate breakfast... :)

 We were hosting a children's outreach for Christmas day. For many of these children this would be how they celebrated Christmas and most of them came by walking or on the back of a moped (a kind of motorcycle).
 After breakfast we (Tristan, Aidan, Daddy, and I) all stood on chairs around the table so we could reach the top the the boxes better and put one can of soda, one sucker, and one package of cookies in a small plastic bag, double knotting it.

I love Aidan's face in this picture; I think he was singing to our Christmas CD.

Once ALL the soda cans, cookies and suckers were put in bags (with the odd ends rushed to the fridge) we started packaging the refreshments. This was a juice box and an odd twist of graham cracker in a double knotted bag. We sat down for this one because we had been standing for 45 minutes. Then Aidan stole my camera....

The juice boxes were a pain to open because they were in a box, covered in plastic, then grouped in four covered with plastic again.

Once everything was packaged (actually this was the last minute items, we had been already done about 200 bags already throughout the week and were behind because of some important events *ahem* O Lodge) the team leaders arrived with Denis Allado. You can read my other post about him HERE.

Almost before the leaders were done briefing, children started to arrive. We- I mean, M. Denis- had come up with a plan to register the children with name tags to make gift giving and safety much easier. Below is Mme. Allado and other volunteers registering the first couple of children.

One group of kids from a church arrived, all 50-70 of them (you can't see all of them in this picture), with the pastor's wife in the back, and her adopted daughter Benedicte in the front. They walked from the church to our campus, crossing roads and avoiding Christmas traffic all the way here. WOW

All the children were divided up with the leaders depending on their size and age, and the leaders would present to them with Evangile Cubes or the 7 C's cubes. Once they had invited the children to give their lives to Christ, the refreshments that our family had so diligently packaged were handed out. 

We had about ten to twelve groups.

The individual groups would have their sort of free time to do what they wanted, then.... oh, yes, then we had to take a picture of three hundred kids and their leaders all together. And M. Denis got me up at the front to do it. Aah!

It was this loud, the entire day!

  I had to stand on a rickety yellow chair to get everyone in the picture.  I was so glad when it was done!
Then we took the children inside (stampede!) to see a cartoon called 'The King is born.' (Jesus est ne.) A very American looking and French sounding Joseph and Mary :) traveled to Bethlehem on a sheet we projected onto. The kids clapped when Jesus was born, when the wise men bowed, and when the family escaped to Egypt. I enjoyed watching the kids watch.

Then we handed out the gifts and the children turned in their badges.

This is the last picture I took that day:

It's Tristan with Benedicte and her little sister, Shulamite.

Christianna isn't in any of these pictures because she's still sick :( :

This is how she spent the entire day :(

And guess what? :) I'm sick now! I contracted a fever the evening of Christmas Present Opening Day, and I'm still sick which is why I had so much time to write this!