Cookies and Caroling

What a fun Christmas this has been! Patrick had been praying about how to reach out to as many people as possible during this time. We just had some new flyers printed up inviting everyone to our Sunday services and we thought it would be a perfect time to pass them out. So, he decided we would go Christmas Caroling American Style! It was great! We practiced and prepared two songs to sing in French. The first was "Hark the Harold Angels Sing." We worked hard at learning the harmony and I'm very excited about how it turned out. Then, we sang the ever popular French Christmas song, "Il Est Nè Le Divin Enfant." We then made up goodie bags with our brochure, a gospel tract, French John and Romans, and a Christmas potholder that Elisabeth and Brenna had made. For some bags we put in a batch of our Christmas cookies or some Banana Bread.

I posted on Facebook not too long ago asking for ideas of what to do if you can't find Mint Extract. We needed it for our peppermint pinwheels! I got some great responses like, "Candy Canes" (Only candy canes we could find were pink and I think it was cotton candy flavor), "Peppermint Patties or candies" (not available here) "Food grade Peppermint Oil" (mine that I had in the medicine cabinet wasn't food grade) So, we were sort of stuck until Josh and I found Mint Syrup! We tried it and it basically ruined our whole pinwheel concept. The flavor just wasn't strong enough and it was too much liquid for our cookie dough. So....we just improvised and made cut-out star cookies, Elves Snickerdoodles and Fudge. Gotta have the fudge, right?

We really had a great time going Caroling. Everyone was so kind! One sweet family said that they've only seen this on American Movies. Visiting here is definitely different than in the states. When you go to someone's house to sing for them, you are always invited to visit for a while and offered something to drink and eat. One place we were even fed dinner, though we were unexpected! :o) One family put some chips on a plate for us to munch on while we visited. Silas started chowing down and said rather loudly, "This is my lunch!" How embarrassing! He had been fed lunch 3 hours earlier! I'm glad this family only spoke french! Josh said when we go visiting in the states we will definitely experience some reverse culture shock! Please pray with us that we will see people come to know the Lord as a result of our Caroling Fun!