Christmas day

We received lots of Christmas cards this year hoping that we would enjoy our different Christmas. It certainly was different but not in a good way. It's been a tough weekend. My enduring image from Saturday is Manuela (the lady whose husband died ) arms outstretched in anguish, standing on the steps of her house as her husband's body, wrapped in a Masai blanket, was carried to the MAF pickup to take it to the hangar to fly it to Dar for autopsy.It's really hard not to start questioning why? Their little boy had a twin sister (Tabia) who died when she was only a few weeks old in Kenya. It seems incredibly unfair that that this loss should occur on top of losing a child. Only last Sunday night, Henrik and Manuela were singing 'Silent night' in German in the Anglican Cathedral here, it was beautiful. We were singing the same song on Friday evening in the compound here at about the time he died. Manuela believes he died whilst we were singing 'sleep in heavenly peace'. She was at the compound singing with us and returned home to find her husband dead. I also heard today that last night thieves broke into their house. Somehow we have to stand firm on what we know is true, that God is in control, that he wants the best for us and that he knows what he is doing, even when it doesn't feel true.

We sort of celebrated Christmas yesterday. Except we didn't really feel like celebrating and Caleb fell sick on Saturday evening and spent Sunday with a high temperature and vomiting. The malaria test we did came back negative, but the doctor next door recommended that we treat him for malaria anyway because the tests are not very reliable. He is still quite ill, although he seems to have stopped throwing up for now.

I actually manged to track down a turkey last week. The owners even offered to kill it for me - how kind! I said what I actually wanted was it to be ready to put straight in the oven. It was delivered as promised, but was rather tough and chewy. A bit disappointing.

Anyway from a rather subdued Christmas here, we hope that wherever you are you have a good Christmas. At least, even if we are sad, we can be thankful that at the first Christmas the light came into this dark and horrible world and that one day there will be no more death or crying, or weeping and that Timo, Tabia, Manuela and Henrik will see each other again.