A Greater Hope Orphanage: January 2011

We let the kids decorate the tree this year with some cut outs and paper shapes mainly to let them have some fun and help get the tree up.
Christmas eve when they all went to bed and we went to work with our team of elves fixing the tree and making things look magical. It's funny because we had a lot of help this year but it still seemed like a lot of work and we ended up going to bed around midnight or so. I am not sure how we did it last year.

We bought some lights this year and someone sent us a string or two. The children awoke to see a nice surprise with the tree all lit up with color. This year we celebrated Christmas with 13 children who have never before celebrated Christmas and that have never even a Christmas gift before

5 am
The children began to trickle down stairs little by little, one by one. Wiping their eyes the one grew into a group they would hover around the door or outside windows to frequently peer in the dark filled room with twinkling lights. Only shadows and outlines of gifts could be seen and they would say theirs "wows" their "oohs" and "Awes" or even a "pretty" then run upstairs to get someone else to share the excitement with.

While the door to fun and excitement remained locked, our regular schedule continued.

Get the house in order, eat breakfast, care for the animals, do their laundry and take a lot of pictures.

Giving thanks for what God has provided just before brekfast

Good morning mom.

Every thing looked wonderfully different this morning. It was beautiful and quiet with a little bit of morning mist, which for us is the closest we get to snow. It chilled down to a nippy 75 from yesterdays mid 90 something. This possibly has been the best Christmas that I have had.

At breakfast the doors were opened wide so the awes could continue.
Jo's jaw sits wide open as well.

Sam did a little happy dance.

Not only were we blessed with a lot of guest this year we also received through our guest different donations for some bicycles and music installments adding to the rather large pile of gifts.

Plus we received shoe boxes again this year from Samaritan's Purse, Operation Christmas Child.

We were blessed to help pass out a part of the 10,000 boxes to the near by churches and school. Our gifts came from Western Australia this year. A big THANK YOU Australia.

With some thought to how we would do Christmas this year. We want the children be a part of giving and have some thought to giving is better than to receive, so the children were asked to pick a gift and give it to the person it belonged to.
It was actually a lot of fun, a great time watching them get their gifts. Smiles, laughs, some embarrassment when younger boy picks the gift of an older girl and people would "ooh".

Underwear!!

In many shoe boxes lied a roll of shock, a bundle of cloths the children would proudly unroll in front of everyone would turn out to be a set of unmentionables.

You could easily watch the realization of their gift on their face as they would quickly try to hide it with embarrassment.

Te-a didn't seem to mind though.