I am having a hard time believing that it is Christmas. It doesn’t feel like Christmas at all; it feels like July! It almost surprises me when people of the street greet me with “Merry Christmas.” There are some toys in the stores, but I know that Christmas is very different for children here than it will be at home for my grandchildren. A piece of candy and an Island wide celebration of dance is what they expect. I haven’t seen Marshallese children with toys other than marbles and cards. Since Christmas is on Sunday, Monday the 26th is the Majuro “BEAT”. We’ve been told the entire town celebrates the holiday with a dance and singing. Everyone practices for weeks to perform their own dance. Our missionary group is going to dance to “Boot Scoot’n Boogie ”,a country line dance. The dance starts at 10 am and goes to 10pm. There is one dance right after another, with standing room only. They say it gets really wild and is very entertaining. I’m not too thrilled to be dancing in it since we didn’t have time to attend the one and only practice that the Elders and Sisters held. It was their P day, not the Senior's. Anyway, we are expected to join in, so that should be interesting to say the least! I’ve done this dance with the Young Women at home and it seems like my boogie doesn’t scoot at the right times! Oh well!
Friday the 23rd we have our mission Christmas dinner, prepared by the Senior Sisters. It will be another very busy week of cooking. The young Elders and sisters look forward to food from home, turkeys and hams, mashed potatoes etc. It seems like Thanksgiving was just a few days ago. I wear many hats here and caterer is one of them.
Sister Perkins described her experience Saturday with the Christmas parade that we didn’t even know was happening.
“I was driving back from town this Sat and got behind a parade. I had heard it was coming but didn’t mean to get stuck behind it. Three trucks representing local stores and the Mayors office had committed themselves to drive from one end of the 30 mile atoll to the other at 5 MPH throwing out candy to all the kids. That is what they did and it was very successful. It was great to see all the kids so excited. It was slow getting home but a fun thing to see. Children lined up on both sides of the road. The adults in the decorated trucks were all wearing Santa hats and there were a few fully decked out Santa’s to be seen. Such fun for the kids-I have not seen any nativity scenes and no Christmas Carols are being sung.”
Saturday the 24th is our Zone Conference. That will be an all day event. Earlier at our last Zone conference, we were challenged to read the Book of Mormon again this year with our missions in mind and then bear our testimonies of the inspiration that we received. This zone conference will have those testimonies as part of the agenda.
Sunday the 25th will be only Sacrament meeting. After church, all of the seniors will have young Elders and Sisters in their apartments using the magic jacks to call home to their parents. Since the magic jacks still are blocked in the office, they have to use our slower at home internet connections to use magic jack.
The thing I miss most about Christmas is having my family around and having my “grandkids pajama night. This is the first year in many, that I haven’t made look alike pajamas for all of my grandkids and then had a party on Christmas Eve with them all dressed in the pajamas that I started making back in June. It is one of my favorite Christmas traditions. I want my family to know that I miss them and love them.
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