SEPTEMBER 27
Last-minute Christmas shopping is not an option when you have more than 100 children. At the end of September, Auntie Miranda, with the help of some teenagers, began compiling the list of all the children from the children’s home, family units, and staff who live on the compound and sorting through years of donated toys, books, dolls, coloring books, games, puzzles, and a million other things to see what would be suitable for each individual child. In the end, they sorted and wrapped 1,056 presents for the big day. No wonder they had to start in September.
NOVEMBER 1
A group of about twelve people from various departments met together to begin planning the Christmas activities. Together we decided that the children, teenagers, and aunties would each prepare one or more presentations to do in church on Christmas day or Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) and who would organize each presentation.
NOVEMBER 3
The youth began training for a musical production entitled “Dreams Come True”. Every night for two hours, they met in the church to learn new songs, dances, and a drama about the Christmas story told from the perspective of Mary, Joseph and their friends.
NOVEMBER 8
Auntie Cathy and I met with our 46 young dancers for the first time. We were scheduled to have four one-hour practices per week from that day until Christmas. Good thing we had so many, because we spent the first 40 minutes of the first practice tracking down all the dancers, getting them to church, getting them to keep quiet and taking attendance. Things improved from there. By the second day we even had time to dance.
DECEMBER 16
Every year, we put together Christmas baskets to give to various members of our community. In Uganda, just as in America, one of the main means of celebration is a big family meal, so the baskets include basic food supplies to help provide that meal for those who might have a hard time acquiring it themselves. The food is packed into a plastic basin, which can be used for years to wash laundry, dishes, shoes and children.
This year, the first group who was served were members of the clinic’s nutrition program. Everyone who brought a malnourished child to the clinic for help in 2021 was invited back for some basic follow-up (height and weight of children and to see how the family is now doing) and to receive a basket. Most of these children were malnourished because their families didn’t have the means to provide enough quality food for them, so being given a nutritious meal for the whole family means a great deal to this population. In total, 135 families were able to walk away with rice, beans, sugar, bananas, and lollipops (candy is always part of a well-rounded meal, right?), among other gifts.
DECEMBER 20-21
After seven weeks of training, Dreams Come True was ready to present. This was, hands down, the best Christmas production Noah’s Ark has ever done. Nearly every teenager age twelve and above was involved as either a choir member, dancer, actor, musician, sound technician or stagehand—even the ones who would normally stick up their noses at such an opportunity. The credit goes to the team of trainers who were hired to come and work with the teenagers. Our youth were excited to have people with knowledge and experience leading them, which, coupled with weeks of long sessions and hard work, translated into a lively and passionate musical no one is likely to forget.
On these two days, we invited our sponsored students from the schools and their families to see the production and then get their Christmas baskets to take home. This way, they were blessed by the musical, heard the Christmas message loud and clear, and were given a gift to help them celebrate Christ’s birth.
Similar to the families from the nutrition program, the students in our sponsorship program are among the more vulnerable population because we include them in sponsorship only when their families cannot cover the cost of school fees themselves. What touches my heart is hearing stories of how many of these families use the contents of the baskets to prepare a meal to share with their neighbors. We know 150 families received from us, but we don’t know how many more received from them.
DECEMBER 23
Christmas basket giving continues! The team traveled to Kalagala (an hour away from our compound, where the founders now live and have started new projects) to serve another 220 baskets to coffee farmers and neighbors in the area. It was quite the celebration as the band led the way around the community while Papa hand-delivered baskets to jjajjas (grandmothers) in their homes.
DECEMBER 24
Hard to believe that after all of that, the actual Christmas days were just beginning. Normally for us, Christmas Eve meant a half day of work but no actual programs or activities. This year, we toyed with the idea of a Christmas Eve service, which evolved into a campfire celebration with the band playing Christmas carols. The pastors invited the missionaries and volunteers from different countries to share stories of how Christmas is celebrated in our cultures, and then aunties from different regions in Uganda also explained how their families and tribes gathered for the day.
“On that day,” one auntie explained, “one special thing was that we knew our parents could not punish us for anything we did wrong… so we would mess!” she said laughing. Then, realizing her mistake, she quickly grabbed the microphone back and added, “But children, don’t you try to do that tomorrow because your consequences will come the day after Christmas, I promise you!”
DECEMBER 25
11:00 am We always begin Christmas day with a church service. On Sundays, children start coming to church when they are six years old, but on Christmas even the toddlers and their aunties join us. This year instead of a normal service, the teenagers repeated Dreams Come True. After practicing so much, it was nice for them to have the chance to perform multiple times that week.
4:00 pm Everyone eagerly gathered in the church to get their presents.
4:15 pm The one who was supposed to drive the huge boxes of presents to the church was nowhere to be found.
4:30 pm The driver was found, but unavailable, and the presents were locked somewhere inaccessible due to a very important meeting.
4:45 pm We announced that presents would be given the following day at 4:00 and that we would now be having a dance party instead.
6:00 pm Normally on Christmas we all eat together, but due to planning and transportation challenges, this year we picked up our food from the main kitchen and ate in our own homes. On this special day we enjoy chicken, french fries, chapatis, salad, and soda. The children don’t get chicken very often so this is always a real treat.
8:00 pm The children divided into two groups for movie night: primary school children up to fifth grade watched in the hut and sixth grade and older watched in the church. Between staying up late (for the children from the home), getting chips, more soda, and sweeties, and watching a new movie, they were all pretty pleased with the evening.
Christian and I are the ones who set up the movies, so Patricia and I hung out with the younger children and Elliot and Christian spent their evening with the teenagers.
DECEMBER 26
11:00 am Growing up, I always saw “Boxing Day (Canada)” marked on my calendar, but assumed there was a big Canadian boxing match always held the day after Christmas. Here, the children joke that it is a day to punch your friend in the head (box them), but in reality we usually celebrate by bringing in bouncing castles for the children to play on all day. This year, since boxing day landed on a Sunday, we knew the children would not be able to focus in church if bouncing castles were waiting at the school. So we pushed the bouncing castles to Monday and made our church service early (usually it is at 2:00) so the young children could join again.
The majority of our church service consisted of the presentations the children had been preparing since early November. The drama group performed a skit called “A Christmas To Believe In,” in which one narrator tried to convince the other that the Christmas story is true, with small pauses for the children’s dance group and one cultural dance by the aunties. The cultural dances are always a crowd pleaser, which was encouraging since we had been practicing it four or five evenings a week for more than a month! In the end of the drama, the children’s choir sang a song called “I Believe In Christmas,” an original song written (not by us) specifically for this skit. I have never been in a choir, not to mention led one, so it was interesting trying to teach the children harmonies and background parts. It was a learning experience for us all, and I think a few of us even enjoyed it.
2:00 pm There was talk of a teenagers-versus-aunties soccer match, but then there was rain.
4:00 pm Presents, take two! This time we succeeded. For all the hours sorting and wrapping, the presents were all given out and opened in the span of 45 minutes. On the one hand, it can be discouraging to see hundreds of toys that we know will be lost or broken before the end of the week. That is the nature of personal possessions in a children’s home. On the other hand, you can’t help but smile at a two-year-old walking around in sunglasses strumming her miniature guitar with a lollipop in her mouth.
7:00 pm Another movie night! This time, the teenagers had their first movie marathon. We showed a three-part series back-to-back-to-back, finishing around midnight. We started with 60 teenagers and ended with 30, and Patricia mercifully fell asleep on my lap for the last hour. Even with our tried and true traditions, it is fun to add something new once in a while. I will admit, I did not stay awake as well as I used to when I did Lord of the Rings marathons in high school.
DECEMBER 27
Well, this day turned into a bit of a disappointment. We were scheduled to have bouncing castles the whole day, but because of a few new COVID cases popping up over the weekend, the castles were cancelled and the children were told to keep some distance from each other again to avoid going back into lockdown. Surprisingly, the children handled it good-naturedly and spent the day playing with their not-yet-broken-lost-or-stolen presents.
DECEMBER 28
We began preparing for New Year’s Eve, which will be the topic of my next post!
Merry Christmas, everybody!
