Today we had our first Christmas party at Blessed Word
Children’s Club!
On Monday we spent the day sorting aid in preparation for
the arrival of the sea container that should be arriving in the next few days!
We continued this on Tuesday and made up Christmas gifts for all the children
at both Blessed Word and Family Believers Children’s Clubs. We wanted to give
each child an item of clothing, some colouring sheets, an accessory (like a
hat, scarf or pair of tights) and some stationery bits. We have about 80
children on the register for Blessed Word and 115 for Family Believers so we
had a lot of bags to make up!
On Wednesday we made preparations for the Christmas party;
making costumes and props, washing up cups and plates for the children to use
and packing the boxes.
On Thursday we went to Blessed Word to go through a final
rehearsal for the Christmas play that some of the children were performing. As ‘mzungus’
we seem to attract a lot of interest and so lots of children turned up who
weren’t involved. We took it in turns to go outside the church and play with
the children (and by this I mean, watch all the boys bundle Jon). Susie,
Kathryn and I did a piggyback race (I won, don’t let Susie tell you she did).
It was really lovely to just be able to spend time with the children and have a
laugh with them without it being part of a structured activity.
And then Friday arrived! We were up early to arrive at
Blessed Word at 9am loaded with lots of boxes (although not as many as we needed
as we later found out!). We set to work decorating the church and trying to
make it as Christmassy as possible – always with a child or two in tow. The
party finally started about 11 and we led ‘We are marching in the light of God’
and some other songs. We discovered that Ugandan children are very good at musical
statues. The time came for the children to perform their version of the
Christmas story. Even though the children were speaking in Ugandan and I was
watching it whilst tying on shepherds’ beards, it was still so touching to see
the story unveil through these children. They are actually a very talented
bunch! At the end of the play, Moses and Jon came out dressed as Father
Christmas (as Anna so eloquently put it "Jon looked like a weird pregnant Dennis the Menace") and gave out sweets.
Lunch was served and I ended up with a very large portion to
which Susie said that she would give me 1000 shillings if I ate it all (about
20p). Moses then offered £1000 if I finished it! Sorry bank account, there was
just so much rice! The time came to give out the Christmas presents which we
had all been looking forward to as we had spent so much time getting all the
bags together. We were just moving on to our second box of gifts when we
noticed that they were for Family Believers Church! Uh oh! Thankfully all the
other boxes were for Blessed Word but we hoped and hoped that we had just
brought along an extra box rather than the wrong box! We got to the end of the
presents and it became clear that yes, we were missing a box. Kathryn and I
took up Santa’s role and decided to go back to the house to get the missing
presents! We ran up the wonderfully steep hill to the main road (aka Kathryn ran
and I asked if we could just jog/speed walk/stop/collapse). Once we were at the
house we ran inside and tore open all the FBC boxes to find the one full of
Blessed Word presents! We got a boda boda back to the church. Sleighs are old
school, Santa uses motorbikes now. We handed out all the remaining presents and
helped some of the children to look through their bags and try on their new
things. Eventually, the party finished about half six! It was crazy and chaotic
but we had fun, the children were happy and we were able to share the story of
the birth of Jesus. I hope we were also able to share the love and care of
Jesus to these children and this community.
We got home to a powerless house, but luckily my laptop had
power so we could treat ourselves to an episode of Miranda. We’re looking forward
to going to bed tonight!
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