A Christmas Celebration

School ends on the 12th of December for a three week break. During this time practically everyone will be going to their respective homes to celebrate Christmas with their families. Since some of our staff members will be traveling back to the States for the holiday before break officially begins we decided to have a little campus Christmas party to bring in the holiday spirit.

We announced the Saturday night party on Thursday night and opened it up for any students that wanted to be a part of the program. We were hoping to do some fun little skits and songs, and maybe a story or game. Anca and I were the main instigators of the event, so of course all the planning fell on our shoulders. We didn't come up with a plan until Saturday afternoon. We were cutting it close, but we pulled it together.

I was abundantly grateful for Melissa's help in the kitchen. She got out the cookie cutters and made a batch of Christmas cookies and frosting and some of the traditional Guyanese Black Cake. While things were being cooked in the kitchen, we put together a fun little BMMC version of the 12 Days of Christmas song and practiced a song with all the female staff here that we would also be performing. None of the students said a word about being a part of the program until right before we started. Then Valissa said she had a couple skits and a poem she wanted to do. I was delighted to have a student presence in the program. It always makes things more fun when more people can participate.

We invited two families from the village to join us for our get together and we all enjoyed a simple supper of bread and pumpkin sauce, popcorn, and a very interesting hot chocolate substitute made of carob. Somehow I ended up being the emcee of the program. I was amazed at how smoothly things went with our very minimal discussion and pretty much no practice. Things went well and people really seemed to enjoy the program. I know I had a fun time. We had songs, skits, a story, a poem, a game, and even cookie decorating!

The night was finished up with the dedicated clean up of Michael and two other guys (Kurt and Delvin) who spent quite some time working on washing up the mountain of dishes from the nice dinner. I helped them a little bit too, but then I had to go practice a song with my fellow female staff members. There would be a little Christmas program put on at the primary school the next evening and we had decided to sing a song for it. It is a pretty song, but we only had a couple days to learn it, and even less time to practice all together. We had performed it acapella for our BMMC party, but we would be doing it with accompaniment at the other program so we wanted to practice with Floyd, our pianist.

As we practiced that song my heart went out to Anca. She is very serious about her musical performance and has been burning with the desire to put together a group of people who could actually sing and perform a choir piece. This is her first attempt and as our director, she wanted it to sound just as it's written on the sheet music. The singers sounded pretty good together (if I do say so myself), but our dear accompanist kind of did his own thing. Melissa had assured Anca that he could play the accompaniment to the song, but he apparently is not that well trained because he wasn't able to quite play things how they were written. As far as I'm concerned he was fine. The people of Guyana sure won't know the difference. They are used to Floyd's unique sound since he plays the keyboard at church every week. But I could see Anca's heart sink at certain parts of the song. There are sometimes when the accompaniment really gives the passion behind the song if played right. Floyd just wasn't getting it. But if there's one thing for missionary's to know and practice daily in the mission field it is to be adaptable and work with what you have. If you're not willing to do this, you will live a life of constant frustration.

By the way our performance at the primary school went just fine. It wasn't concert quality, but it sure did the trick.