Christmas in Toposaland

The most important part of today was this group that met under a big tree here in Paringa. A few of the believers from nearby villages led the singing and the discussion after hearing the story from God's Word (Luke 1-2).

 She's got her fancy safety pin/bead hair for Christmas...

 ...and the answer is YES, that is a bra on the top of her head. Fabulous!

Note the Western clothes on a lot of the guys. The Toposa were told many years ago (and not by us) that they need to have new clothes to wear to Mass on Christmas. Most have a long way to go before they will understand that God sent Jesus for the Toposa just as they are, and He cares about their hearts, not their clothes.

Before we did the main celebration, we had a US Christmas at the Lewis house. We started cooking pancakes at 6am so that the boys could come out of their room at 6:30. They didn't want to sleep in, weird....

My gifts were a necklace, ornaments, and notebook from Uganda, a bottle of gold Heinz ketchup, dried fruit and a pumpkin from Carrie's garden.

Christmas Eve Part 2

Since there are three "units" (me, Alyssa and the Lewises) that are now one Toposa Team family, we tried to incorporate a Christmas tradition that each one of us did in the US. My family's tradition is pizza on Christmas Eve and Alyssa's family does a birthday cake for Jesus so we had both last night!

I may have had 4 pieces. Oops...

There are 7 different colors of sprinkles for the birthday cake and each color represents an attribute of Jesus (green for creator, yellow for light of the world, etc). We would read about the attribute, read a Bible verse that describes it, and then each person would get to sprinkle their color on the cake. My color was brown: Jesus is the servant of all.

I believe I've mentioned before that the Lewises' house gets extremely hot when you add the ovens cooking to the Sudanese heat. Don't judge the sweat.

Missing a few letters, but you get the point!

Christmas Eve Part 1

These activities really have nothing to do with Christmas, but since they happened today (Christmas Eve) I am considering them part of the festivities. Benton, Davis and Alyssa made one of those plaster garden decoration pieces where you mix the plaster and water together, pour it in a mold, and then put decorative beads and stones on it.

Davis is 9 and Benton just turned 12 on Thursday. They are awesome. Who needs pest control when you have two capable Toposa boys who love to kill the rats and bats that live in your shower area?

 The boys did a great job!

Here comes Sgt. Walker, age 4

He was sneaking around the corner to scare "Alytha"

Got her!

Poor Davis was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

God isn't Gandalf and Jesus didn't surf

You know how in the western church, especially in the US, there seems to be an occasional push to remind ourselves that God isn’t a prayer vending machine who resembles Gandalf, and how Jesus isn’t a white guy with long flowing surfer hair but actually was born in the Middle East? Okay, so take that sense of redefinition and multiply it by as many times as you can. That’s what’s happening out here. 

I’m reading the Bible through chronologically and it’s been a really helpful way to see how the Bible is ONE story, not a bunch of stories that God thought were important enough to group together. The reading plan I’m doing is a one-year plan. Last week I finished Genesis (with some chapters from Psalms and John 1 on a few days), currently I am reading Job, then in January I'll move to Exodus and so on. 

South Sudan is so, so, so underdeveloped. In fact, minus our compound with its solar panels and two vehicles, the area where we are is literally about as developed as Old Testament times. It’s hard to imagine, especially with all of the globalization and development in other parts of the "developing world", that some places still live out all the stereotypes in a National Geographic documentary. I’ve met less than five Toposa adults who can read. Some of the kids can read a little bit because they are in primary school. Everything we do is oral, so I have to read Bible stories a little bit differently when I’m preparing for a story group. This week we’ve been telling Luke 2 in preparation for Christmas. The emphases are in MUCH different places than what I’m used to. We’ve been talking about how Jesus was born on the earth just like a Toposa. In the US I learned how shocking the birth circumstances were: Jesus was born in a barn with the animals. There wasn’t even room inside anyone’s home or hotel and how dare the earth receive its king like that? Well, the Toposa know all about being born outside among the bulls and goats because that’s how all the women give birth. There isn’t a concept of what an “inn” is out here so of course visitors to villages just sleep on the ground with everyone else. The new perception of God from Luke 2 is that He came not in a shocking way but in a very ordinary way to show that from the very beginning He made all the effort to show that He is really Emmanuel…God WITH us. The Christmas story is just as applicable in Toposaland as it is in Dallas or Lubbock. I mean, duh I already knew that in my head, but now I’m really experiencing it. Two different things.

One really neat thing that is also extremely annoying to my type-A Western personality is that the really good conversations about God’s Word seem to happen when I don’t plan them. It’s frustrating to go to all of the trouble to continually remind people “hey, we’ll be coming back every Wednesday afternoon to listen to a story from God’s Word,” or “all of the women are invited to come to our compound tomorrow at 3 to sing and talk about a story from God’s Word,” and everyone says they will be there or they will come, and then like two people (or no people) show up. Then we could just walk into a village completely unannounced and there will be like 20 people that come over to sit and listen and all of them ask good questions about the story. God’s schedule is soooo not my schedule. That’s okay, just not a concept that I easily embrace. As I’m learning more and more, I am so NOT in control of anything out here.

Christmas Cards!

South Sudan's Next Top Model

Ngakidamdams are Toposa celebrations, and most of the time they make absolutely no sense to our team. The things that seem to be fairly consistent are special clothes, whistle blowing, and a lot of jumping up and down in a big circle. Sometimes other things are thrown into the mix, like gunshots, killing a bull, or my personal favorite, switching up the time and doing it in the middle of the night at max volume. I love staying awake all night to gunshots and singing! Not.
Christmas is an especially popular time of the year for ngakidamdams. There will be a big one on Christmas day, plus apparently they like to practice because there have been large ones the last two days. On Thursday night some of the girls who were returning to their villages post-celebration stopped by our gate to show off their moves. Half hilarious, half totally ridiculous.

 Normally the girls wear cloth skirts and a wrap and don't all look the same, but because they had been at a ngakidamdam they were wearing their party outfits.

 You know you're jealous you can't pull off this much attitude in one outfit.

 The short "skirts" are made from shells that are strung together, and these are for really special occasions. We think Christmas was the reason for these skirts, but maybe there was a totally different reason they were celebrating that day. The long green skirt in the middle is the normal ngakidamdam skirt. It's made from goat skin and has yellow and green beads stitched into it.

I'm loving the ear-to-nose ring. I think it really completes the look.

It's Beginning To Look A Tiny Bit Like Christmas

It is so hard for me to remember that Christmas is almost here! Something about the heat and the lack of Christmas parties/decorations/music makes it seem like Christmas doesn't really exist. But Christmas DOES exists and it's not about the weather or Santa or gifts or any of that in the first place.

However.

South Sudan DOES need a liiiiittle bit of Christmas decoration and who doesn't love a good batch of Christmas cookies?!?

Welcome to Christmas, Team Toposa style.

 Our Christmas tree is a thorn branch from a tree limb on our compound. Alyssa's mom had the awesome idea to send us strips of paper, staples and a stapler so that we could make a "thankful chain" for Thanksgiving. On each slip of paper we wrote something we were thankful for. We thought it would make a perfect garland for our tree!

 We hung parts of the chain on our door and along the top of our kitchen area.

 Carrie, Benton, and I made Christmas cookies yesterday. The oven made the inside of their house approximately 1 million degrees.

 Make that 2 million degrees.

 This is Carrie's best friend's baby, Lotikitoi. Lotikitoi is 10 months old and some of his favorite things to do are dance to music, pee on the floor, and eat candy-cane shaped Christmas cookies.

Walker "helped" by cleaning the icing off of the utensils.