Christmas in Honduras

This year was the first time I ever celebrated Christmas outside of the US. There were some big differences and some similarities.

The biggest difference was the lack of family. This was also the hardest part of the holiday season and about living in another country. Also, fireworks are much more popular here in Honduras than in the US. At least for Christmas anyway. It was fun to watch the fireworks at midnight as the calendar flipped to December 25th. (Especially fun from the rooftop porch of our new place!)

One similarity I saw was that people got a little crazier as it got closer to Christmas. We live really close to the main mall in town and it just got nuts in the last few days before Christmas. (Which was hard for us since we were trying to find things for our new house at this time.) Another unfortunate similarity is that Christmas (as well as every other day) is supposed to be about Jesus Christ, but for much of the world it is about me me me.

This year, Christmas Eve was a very special day. We spent it with our new team here in La Ceiba. Our time together started with a good old fashioned traditional Christmas dinner. It was delicious and fun as we got to hear about some things that are family traditions of our teammates. After that, we had the 'gringo church' Lessons and Carols service where Ashley and I got to light the final advent candle. We also did a small gift exchange that was a lot of fun. We took turns passing gifts out and laughing together. It was a great way for us to start to get to know our teammates better and was a lot of fun for all of us!

As for Christmas day, Ashley and I spent it in our house relaxing and being together. Nothing too exciting, but it was a good day for us to think about the amazing gift we have received of Jesus Christ and the life that He has given both of us. We also got to Skype with many of our family members which helped a little in the missing of them. We hope that you had the chance to dwell on the love of God and the immense gift of His Son this Christmas!

We are in our house!

We are so excited to share with you all that we moved into our new home on Wednesday! Eight days after we arrived our house was ready for us to move in (kind of). We have had some repairmen in and out of the house and at least one of them will be back (supposedly) next week. We had been hoping to be able to get into a house before Christmas so that we could have a sense of home and the Lord provided!

It has been a little crazy these last few days. We moved in and needed to do some shopping for furniture and household necessities. We have found some and will continue our 'settling in' after Christmas. We had a little set back yesterday when we lost power for about 6 hours because a vegetable delivery truck pulled down a power line just around the corner to our place.

We live pretty close to the mall of La Ceiba, so everything has been kind of intense the last few days with Christmas getting closer. The traffic is busy all day and people seem to be in the I-Still-Need-To-Buy-Christmas-Stuff 'spirit.' We are looking forward to getting moved in and getting to know our neighbors and our city a little bit better over the next few weeks.