All of our village friends starting coming by regularly this week because of the Christmas holidays. Even in our majority Muslim country, they get days off for Christmas. Our girls have enjoyed playing with friends every day, have learned new games, and have had great opportunities to practice language.
One day, they all sat down for popsicles and water and we were able to share the Christmas story. After a little conversation, we decided to invite them back on Christmas Eve for a Christmas party.
Last minute preparations involved finding a restaurant that could provide food for us, putting a "unwrap game" together. We found a great new local restaurant. We prepared lots of games, and the great news is we had 28 guests show up and 38 people total with our family and another family that came to help. We shared the Christmas story as they ate their Nasi Kuning Komplet (including yellow rice, noodles, a fried boiled egg, sambal, etc.)
We finished the day off with the 'unwrap' game... where we not only had the main 'gift' of snickers bars in the middle, but tons of little gifts along the way, so that everyone eventually got a little gift as they opened the package!
A blessing to share our culture... and hopefully the reason for a "Hari Natal" (Christmas Day) with our community.