Sunday, December 8

Advent Sweet Sabbath

God purposes to build into us a quality of endurance...The people who will stay with their assignments through thick and thin are the ones who carry this record: “Discipline accepted.” These people are more concerned to guard their daily dying than their living rights. God’s people are the ones who accept the daily dying because it is indispensable and an integral part of accomplishing their mission. If we want to be able to say down the road, “I have completed the work you gave me to do,” let us welcome the incompatibilities that toughen spiritual temper and at the same time drive us to the resources of the life that was laid down for us. ~R. Arthur Matthews

All of the Choate ladies have succumbed to the village cold in varying degrees. Sleep has been a precious commodity because of late-night choir rehearsals and dance practices – all in preparation for Christmas. Olivia has jumped into village life wholeheartedly and loves singing and dancing alongside her friends. She also has the mildest version of the village cold.

In the midst of feeling rotten and being a little discouraged with the slow pace of the project, we’ve enjoyed some sweetness: our traditional gingerbread house construction. Except this year, the girls opted for a gingerbread canoe, and Aaron created a massive gingerbread turtle. We also included paddles and coral and a couple of gingerbread people to sit in the canoe. The canoe design was a disaster and fell apart completely. And the crushed candies on the turtle shell refused to melt properly. But we glued everything together with caramel, and it was delicious.

As we “welcome the incompatibilities that toughen spiritual temper and at the same time drive us to the resources of the life that was laid down for us,” I’m grateful for little sweet things that God sends our way. Like the gas cylinder that finally arrived, along with fresh eggs and snail mail. Not a single egg was broken, thanks to the careful packing of our SITAG colleagues. They even included a surprise – canned diced green chilies! We also got some rain today. A nice, long, soft garden rain. Not enough to refill the rain tanks, but enough to bring them up a little bit while gently soaking the ground.

Friendship sweetens our days, too. This weekend, Olivia and Katherine joined their friends to go hunt down some Mausa branches to make grass skirts. They tromped off into the bush, knives in hand, and returned to sit on the beach and scrape bark. Now the denuded branches are soaking in the ocean to soften the pulp and to make it easy to tear into strips for the skirt.