December Pictures

Saying goodbye to my lovely MCC reps family:(

                                           Camp

December Reflections

I have sat down several times during the month of December to write a blog post, but my desire to be creative and inspiring in my writing has left me with writers block.  I still want to update friends and family on what has been happening in my life, so here is a bit of a mundane but hopefully helpful description of the past month of life in Zimbabwe.  

Goodbyes:

The past month has been a bit of a blur of goodbyes, preparations and Christmas Cheer.  I will begin by sharing about some of the more difficult goodbyes.  Early December I had to say goodbye to my amazing, incredible, wonderful MCC reps; the family that first welcomed us SALTers into the country, provided us with endless hospitality and supported us in our first 3.5 months of living in Zimbabwe.  It has been challenging to say goodbye to such an amazing family, but I do feel blessed to have known them and to have learned so much from them about living in Zimbabwe and working with MCC.  Fortunately, we have new MCC reps coming in early January and I know they will also be amazing people to work alongside in Zim.

Goodbyes will continue to be a common occurrence during my year in Bulawayo as volunteers at the Sandra Jones Centre come and go and work visas are not permitted and people can't stay in the country.  Young adults also continue to leave the country to study and work because the job market in Zimbabwe is not strong.  At the beginning of December I also watched my church community and host family lose a young man about my age, He was newly married and had a young son, he died after breaking his femur.  I had met this young man on a couple of occasions and can't quite believe that he died.

Camp:

I did something in December that I do not usually do because normally I am living in cold climates. I went with 16 of our high school girls from the Centre to a week long adventure camp. Logistically it was a bit of a challenge preparing 16 of our girls for camp because there were lots of things the girls needed for camp. I was one of the camp leaders but I spent much of the time getting to know our girls a lot better. It was a fun experience to be at a camp out in the bush. We climbed mountains, abseiled (also known as repelling), swam, paint balled, played games and worked at discipleship of 60 teenagers.  It was fun, challenging and beautiful to spend a week in nature. I was exhausted at the end of the week but grateful for the opportunity to spend this week getting to know our high school girls better.

Christmas Preparations:

December has also been full of preparations.  Christmas at a Children's Centre is extremely hectic, as all the children are on holiday from school which means they are at the Centre all day long.  All month the Centre has been getting ready for an event called Carols by Candlelight. On the 20th and 21st of December we held an event where the community could come and participate in variety of activities such as meeting many characters from the Bible, weaving, pottery, bread baking, dancing, face painting, a jumping castle, petting zoo and various other Christmas treats. It ended with a live nativity play and singing many Christmas carols all of course by candlelight! The event all went very smoothly and was a blast.  Most Zimbabweans do not do a lot to celebrate Christmas so this event was a fun way to get in a festive mood.
It has been a good and challenging month and the days have just flown bye! We also spent several days, along with the world, celebrating the life of Nelson Mandela. Watching endless news coverage and being thankful for his impact on healthier race relations and social justice in South Africa.  I am looking forward to a couple of days off of work and am grateful for the many friends I have here in Zimbabwe to celebrate Christmas.

May your Christmas be full of much love, joy and peace!
-Elena