We just celebrated a Christmas Eve lunch with our new friends that are refugees from Congo. I cooked up some African grub, we ate with our hands, we shared about our lives, compared cultural traditions, and we read from His Word in Kiswahili.
They shared more about being forced to leave their home with only what they could carry, walking miles for days without food or water, living in a refugee camp for seven years, losing their first born ongoing medical difficulties, and not knowing where the rest of their family is right now. Loss and real hardship. And I kept thinking about what can be redeemed through brokenness. Mine and ours. As always God was speaking to me through them.
Christmas is about this.
The unlikely place, the story that seems too painful and difficult to be made new, the hope within His promises. Christmas is about Him choosing it all for He knew what the plan was from the beginning. Jesus being born into the dirty, sinful world in a seemingly insignificant place to redeem all creation.
We are new friends meeting together and not having much in common except Jesus and a shared second language. They need us to translate and explain life in the US and we need them to remind us a little of what we desperately miss now that we are back. God knew.
After this picture we joked and said they had to trade in the African stoic faces for the silly American “laughing” in pictures 
“The One who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.” John 1:9
Merry Christmas friends and peace to you as we celebrate the True Light that shines no matter where you are on this earth.
Dare to hope with me,
Love the idea with your light-pic 🙂 Merry Christmas to you too!
Love the ideo of your light-pic :-)Merry Christmas to you too, enjoy the company of family and all the delicious food around you.
I am praising God for this connection- to Africa for you and America for them. Can't wait to see where this friendship leads…amazing.