Our Crazy Quilt of Christmas Traditions

As a young boy, I grew up in Northern Indiana. My family lived near Amish country. Many summers my grandmother would take me to Shipshawana. One of the things that she loved to look at were the crazy quilts. They are hand-made and full of bright patterns and different colors and fabrics. Basically a crazy quilt is mismatched pieces that form a beautiful whole. This is what our Christmas Tradtions have started to mimic. The crazy quilt of our Christmas tradtions is made up of some African holiday fun, family ideas, missionary ingenuity, and American classics. This assortment of activities have become a beautiful pattern to our family.

The No-Snow Man-

One of the the newer tradtions that our family has started has been making a snowman. In West Africa??? Yes, making a snowman.
Patty read about this idea in Family Fun. Just a few cardboard boxes, cotton batting, pom-poms for eyes (no coal here), add an African kente strip for a scarf, and voila! Our Ghana Snowman.

The Cookies, Snacks, and Candy Making

Patty grew up in a family that loves different kinds of holiday treats, and let's just say my own German roots love getting fat around the holidays, so it has led to tons of baking with the children around the holiday season. One thing that makes many of these things so special is that they are not available here in Ghana, or are too expensive to make but once a year. At the beginning of December the aprons and ovens mitts are donned and flour covers little faces. The girls love to help make each treat. The list of sweets consist of sugar cookies (cut out and decorated), Mom M's special thumb print mints, heath-bars, .payday bars, peanut butter fudge, white chocolate pretzels, and scotcharoos. We even added another one to the list... chocolate-covered cherries. After a few extra pounds and ten or twelve sugar buzzes, the treats are made and consumed!

Christmas Hut-

This tradition was given to our family from Ghana. In the villages of Ghana many children build Christmas Huts. On the 24th of December the children will cut down Nim Tree and Palm Branches. They then place four large branches in the ground to act as support beams. After the support beams are up, branches are placed for rafters, and the children begin to weave the leaves and sticks into walls for their hut.

Many children will spend hours decorating their huts. They use flowers, feathers and other beautiful things to complete the house. In many village the people decided which house is the most beautiful and praise the children that work the hardest.

The belief is that Mary and Joseph will visit the village on their way to Bethelehem and will pick the nicest Christmas Hut to stay in. The children also get the joy of sleeping outside. Most families allow their children to sleep in their Christmas House all night.

Our family has tried to adopt this practice. There are no Nim trees around our house, and the compound that we live in is concrete, so there is no way to dig holes for our support beams. These facts mean that our family has to improvise. We cut down palm branches for the front of our house and then construct a hut, Indian teepee stlye. The kids love it! They decorate it with flowers and play in it all day on the 24th. They do not sleep in it, but they love this African tradition that we have added to our holiday season.

Manger and Baby Jesus-

Christmas time is very exciting, but also very different from our normal schedule. Patty read about this idea and felt that it would teach good lessons and also help the girls to learn to control themselves at this hyper festive season.




At the beginning of December we set out a manger - a small open box wrapped in brown paper. Next to the box is a large bowl of local broom straws (our hay). Each day the children know that they are being watched. If they perform an act of kindness or are obedient right away then they get the chance to put a straw in the box.

We tell the children that the box is going to be like a manger, and on Christmas day we will have a baby doll that will represent baby Jesus. If they are kind and obedient, then when Jesus comes he will have a soft, nice bed, but if they are selfish and disobedient then he will find a cold, hard bed.

The girls really liked this. Many times Ella would say to Carey, "You better be nice, or Jesus' bed will be hard!" Their faces would light up when they had the chance to put straw inside.

On Christmas morning before our family read the Christmas Story, the manger was laid out on the couch and the girls were able to see the doll wrapped in swaddling clothes.


Our Gingerbread House-

First, I have to say that graham crackers are almost impossible to find in Ghana or are very expensive, so that is the reason that our family has used gingerbread and not graham crackers to build our house. Second, gingerbread is really not that hard to make and is a bit easier to use then graham crackers. Anyways, each year around the time our family makes our trip to Accra, we begin to collect candy and treats to decorate our gingerbread house with.

Each year the gingerbread house is made and then given to the children that attend a party that we have for friends. The house is "ooed" and "aahed," and then eaten. It normally takes only about ten minutes for the whole thing to be wolfed down.

These things together with many more little things make up our Crazy Quilt of Christmas Traditions. Tradtions are a wonderful thing to have in the family. Whether they are simple things like opening a present the night before Christmas or having large parties, no matter what a family does, make it special. Like Matt Sexton once said, "It is easy to be boring!"

I hope this post finds each of the readers enjoying their after-holiday glow and able to remember great tradtions that they took part in this holiday season.

Capturing the Spirit of Liberia

Hope these pictures find the reader enjoying their Holiday season. With the workload of this holiday time, I had decided not to post here the last few days, so I wanted to leave some photos that I have found online this last week. Enjoy. Will be back to blogging soon.

These photos are taken by photo journalist, Glenna Gordon, she currently lives/works in Liberia. She seems to be a very talented photographer. Her blog is found at http://www.scarlettlion.com.

Man with tuba in Pharmacy- part of the city symphony

The odd one out

Shoes anyone?

This is recess time

Plantian on the way home from the farm

Smily Face

The Young and the Old

Read the Words on the WALL!!!!

Hair Cut Time

Football all the time, no matter the limitations

Some guards just have to find something to do!

Welcome to the internet cafe

The bass player for the Liberian symphony!

Last, but not least, West African Pirates!

Snippets and Thought Provoking Facts

Found these three graphics on the Internet. They are interesting. Many times while traveling in the States people at churches ask me if I know a friend of theirs in a country in Africa. To which I ask what country they live in. Most often the reply is a country in Eastern or Southern Africa. Most people do not grasp the immensity of the continent of Africa. This first graph helps to see its size. When a person asks a missionary if they know a person that lives in say, Botswana, when they live in Ghana, it would be like asking someone from Maine if they know a person that lives in Tijuana. It is not to likely that they know hem, but a good missionary learns to smile at these innocent question, swallow a sarcastic answer and say no.


The second is just a amazing grouping of little known facts about Africa. It is interesting to me that it covers all sides of life here.

The last might make some groups like UN Aid or Feed the Children mad, but after six years of living in Africa I have discovered sadly that most aid groups should be relegated on a level just above TV evangelist. This is by means no condemnation of all groups, nor the temporary workers. Many short term workers are sincerely trying to help, but it is clear to see that most NGO's, aid groups, programs just put a bandage on a heart attack. This is not to mention the almost immoral level of bureaucracy that accompanies most UN works.

Youth Activities and Sunday Programs

The first of December the Bible Study had its last youth activity for the year. Most activities are held on Friday nights after the kids help cook supper and are free. This allows most of our young girls to attend, but since it means that it must happen after dark it really limits our games, since we have to use the school rooms.
This activity, the youth had a field day. The group was limited since the girls were greatly limited in their attendance, but most of our young men came. They had a great time. The Lord blessed the group with an over cast sky, so that it was not to hot.

The big balls that the church bought are a hit! I try to do inexpensive games, or games that cost no money at all. There was three-legged soccer, big soccer ball games, like steal the bacon, and even water sachet tossing. (Water balloons are very expensive here, but they have small plastic bags that are easy to fill, and work great!)

One of the warm up games, was called frozen t-shirts. We split the guys into two groups. Gave each team a t-shirt that was frozen solid. The first team to pull it apart, and put it on someone won. It was so funny to watch this game. Ghanaians hate cold and ice, so it was really funny to watch them. Everyone was laughing and shouting.

Here is a picture of one of our team captains putting on his frozen shirt. Everyone was laughing when he started shivering.

On Sundays we have started to teach through the Bible story by story. The newest part of this has been adding flannel pictures. It has greatly aided in the story telling and preaching. It has been very exciting to see people get excited about hearing these stories. Each week people are eager to see the next piece of the puzzle.

Currently we are praying that these stories will help to lay foundation blocks for people to build their new faith upon. Many people overseas take for granted the Bible knowledge that many Westerners have. Here in Ghanaians people have sporadic Bible knowledge at best. Teaching the Bible in order and in story form, greatly seems to aid the Christian worker in help people to understand that ideas and beliefs of the Bible.

Baptisms

On the 6th of December the Bible Study had its fourth baptism. There were three adult men that where baptized. The first was a man named Dennis. He has been attending meeting off and on for almost two years. In the last year he has become very faithful and attends almost every Sunday morning. About ten months ago he came to the realization that his old church was not teaching correct doctrine. After finishing his "Way of Peace' Bible study he accepted Christ. Then quickly told us that he wanted to be baptized. Pray for him to grow in Christ, and find a good wife to marry.

The second to baptized was Bismark. Bismark attends meetings with his wife and son. They are very faithful. Bismark was raised Catholic, but after arriving in Kumasi he quite attending. After Dora invited his wife, they began to attending services. After God worked greatly in his life, including healing his son that was at deaths door, Bismark became very serious about the things of God. After finishing our "Way of Peace" Bible Study, he trusted Christ. He made a hard decision to be baptized, since the Catholic churches here are very rich, but he did not flinch when he felt it was God's will. Please pray for his wife. She attends, and my wife is studying with her. Please pray that her religious background will not harden her to the gospel.

The last to be baptized was Nat. He is a young community college man, that chose to join our church. He has attended a church called, "Deeper Life", which is a form of old holiness church. After many months of talking with Nat, Pastor Andrew felt that he was truly saved, but had not been baptized. Nat has been born again for about five years. He knew he should be baptized, but had not official joined the Deeper Church. Please pray for his growth and victory over sins in his life. He is desirous to grow, but has confessed to some besetting sins.

Also pray for the new groups of believers that will start baptismal class in the new year. Pray that some that have finished classes already will make the decision to join our group.

Patty visitation partner, Gifty, has traveled. Currently she is seeking a replacement. We are praying that maybe Dora, the lady pictured, or another lady from the studies will join my wife to spread the good news.

Over the River and Through the Jungle, to the Capital we go...

We normal only go to the capital for government paperwork or to pick up teams that visit us on missions trips, but this last week our family took a family trip to buy gifts for Christmas. We left on Monday morning via government bus that departed at 5:00 in the morning. Think Grey-hound with African movies and music minus the bathroom.

Monday we arrived about noon. After checking into the Baptist guest house. We headed out to the town. We went to the mall. The Accra mall is our only mall in Ghana, and one of only three in West Africa. It is really nice. It has nice stories like: Shop Rite, Game, Mr. Price, etc. These will not make much since to our American friends since all these are chain stores from South Africa. After a few hours of shopping we headed back to the guest house for relaxation and play. The guest house has a play ground that our kids and our friends kids played on for hours. (These late nights with mosquitoes, landed Patty with malaria, but after 6 years of not getting malaria, it was hard to remember it is still here, but that is another story)

Tuesday our friends watched out kids so that we could go shopping for our kids. I think that I never got as many gifts as these kids! On Wednesday, we watched their kids. So in the afternoon the kids where loaded up in a taxi and we headed over to Churcheese. The couple that takes care of the guest house told us about it. It is a mini-Chucky Cheese. They have a play land with ball pit. There is a mini-merry-go-round, and some games. The kids loved it.

After playing for about two to three hours the kids where ready to eat. They had great fried chicken and fries. Mom and Dad got to buy food from a new sandwich shop. We had shakes and smoothies with gourmet sandwiches. It was a really nice treat!

Then Thursday our kids said good bye to the Guest House Snowman and we headed back to Kumasi for our Thursday night Bible study. We where able to finish most of our shopping and had a great time of relaxation.

Decking the Halls

Living in a tropical climate, we have learned that it is important to deck the halls early. Luckily I grow up in a family that decorates the day after Thanksgiving. We have continued this tradition as missionaries here in Ghana. Our decorations make their debut the end of November and stay around until New Years... though we might even extend this if we can manage it!

This year we had our greatest challenge, two Christmas trees. The second year that we were in Ghana, our Christmas tree (a ultra slim blue spruce pine from Target's after Christmas sales) was sent to us and it has been the center piece of our Tropical-Winter Wonderland ever since. This year we are able to buy a massive Christmas tree from a local store. It towers to a height of ten feet (I had to talk Patty out of the 12 or 14 foot models, since they would not fit in our apartment).

The girls jumped out of bed at about 5:30 in the morning jumping on our bed wanting to decorate. Out came all the boxes. Luckily because of a trick that I have learned (thank you Mr. Allen) there where no tangled lights. This is very important, though we do not put them outside I do want the house covered in lights. If we hung out all those different color lights outside, all the neighbors would think we have started a bar, since they are the only people that do that here in Ghana.

After getting up the two trees and stringing lights the girls put on my Santa Claus outfit they bought me last year for Christmas. Thy must have thought I needed to loss some weight. Just before lunch we started all the Christmas music. Thanks to Amazon mp3 online we where able to get all the classics this year, like: "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth", "Santa Baby", "I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas", and "Michigan Christmas". Once we hit the play button these tones ring through the house from Thanksgiving to New Years.
We try to mix in our local flair with our Western Christmas. The girls love when we decorate our two elephants as Mr. and Mrs. Claus. We even bought a large hand carved Africa Father Christmas.

The center stage of our family room is my wife's collection of Nativities. This photo is of a Ghanaian Nativity that we bought in the capital. Currently she has 17 different Nativities, they come from Ghana, Lebanon, Kenya, America.

When we finally have the whole thing finished on Friday night, we are tired but happy. For the next month we get to enjoy the tinkling lights and holiday cheer. As our missionary friends told me last week, "there is just something special about Christmas on the mission field".