Hello everyone! I hope you all had a blessed Christmas and New Years! It has been busy around City of Refuge. Let me tell you what the holidays looked like for me and the kids. For Thanksgiving and Christmas, we celebrated twice! First, all the ex pats would get together and cook food that we traditionally have for the holidays. This can be quite the struggle! As you can imagine, ingredients can be difficult to get here. One thing I didn’t realize is that grocery stores will hike up prices for certain items because they know ex pats will buy them. The prices of turkeys in grocery stores were increased to $200! City of Refuge refused to pay those prices, so one of the directors decided to bring back a turkey and a ham in her suitcase. It was delicious! Not to mention a lot less costly. We ate lots of American food and it was amazing! I don’t think you realize how much you miss certain foods until you can’t have them. The staff at CORM have some great cooks!
A few days after, we celebrated again with a Ghanaian Thanksgiving and Christmas that served local food. The whole CORM community ate dinner together and then had a big dance party afterwards. The kids loved it! For Christmas, everyone at CORM gets a new outfit made out of matching material. The children loved how fancy they looked in their new clothes. Also, they received new tennis shoes and dress shoes! I wish you could have been there to see the giant smiles on their faces. It was priceless. It was hard to be away from home during the holidays. My parents, my fiance, and his family all celebrated Thanksgiving together. This made me very happy but also made me miss home. It helped to be surrounded by so much love here.
There were also several big outings that the CORM children had over the holiday break from school. All of the children had a day at the swimming pool! Let me tell you, these kids love the water! Some of the littles were scared at first because this is not a regular activity for them, but after some time, they loved it! We had splashing fights, danced to Christmas music, and ate pizza. It was such a fun day. The only thing they didn’t enjoy was waiting twenty minutes after they ate to get back in the water.
Their next outing was to the capital city of Accra. There, we went to the mall for pizza and a movie. For some of the children, it was their first time in a movie theater. They saw The Greatest Showman, and had so much fun watching the musical. Most of the children liked the pizza, but some are still adjusting to eating different food besides Ghanaian dishes. One little boy hid underneath the table from the pizza until we brought him a plate of rice. It’s definitely different than what you see from the children back home!
We also had a girl’s slumber party. All of the teenage girls gathered in the prayer house with their blankets and pillows for a night of fun! The girls requested popcorn, hot chocolate, fingernail painting, games, and movies. They set up the projector on the wall and they watched movies all night. In fact, there was little time for sleep with all of the movies there were to see! It was a great bonding experience.
New Years Eve was another fun event. We had a relaxing day, and then went to church about 10pm at night. We brought in the New Year praying and worshiping, and then at 12:30am we set off fireworks. The children love fireworks! They were going crazy for the display. The children were allowed to stay up as late as they wanted, so many of them didn’t sleep! They stayed awake all night, and the next day. I am used to working the night shift in the states but I couldn’t even hang with these kids. They have so much energy!
This week, the children returned to school, and I started teaching Biology again. It feels good to get back into the routine of things. Also, this week they broke ground on building the clinic! I could not be more excited to see this finally happen. It’s very difficult to navigate the waters of opening up a clinic in another country. Pray that we have God’s guidance through these steps, and that it would happen smoothly.
Also, pray that God would direct me in my remaining months here. Pray that He would open up ways for me to help and to be a blessing to the CORM staff and children. My health has been an issue the last few months, if you could keep that in your prayers as well I would greatly appreciate it. I love you all, and thank you so much for your prayers and encouragement. I hope you all enjoyed the holidays and have a blessed 2018.
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