Happy New Year to you all.
We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas & New Year celebrations.
We have just spent our 2nd Christmas here in Chad, but our first actually
living & working at the hospital complex. Christmas is a very short
celebration here, being a Muslim country, with only Christmas Day being an
official holiday.
Despite this Christmas Day still proved to be a very busy
time but did include us as a team having time to visit the patients to give out
small gifts to all who were staying in the hospital along with their relatives.
This was certainly a highlight of the day, being able to share this special day
with all who were here.
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| Gifts Received |
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| New Jumper |
In the evening we did manage to all sit down to our
Christmas meal together at around 7pm & fortunately was completely uninterrupted,
which is indeed a rare occurrence. As the team here is growing, now 12 in
number including children, we decided to do a safari meal, with a different
course being enjoyed at a different house which was
great fun.
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| Christmas Dinner |
What made the event even more special was a gift we had received
from a group of children from a church in America. They had decided as a small
group to write to us all here to thank us for the work that we are doing and
for spending our Christmas so far away from our families and friends. Each one
of us received a letter which we shared together as a team prior to eating,
each reading the letter to the rest of us. It was such a treat to receive an
unexpected gift of a letter and to know others were thinking of us at this
time.
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| Letters received |
Communication from family, friends and churches is such an
important aspect of our lives here and something we all look forward to and
need to help us through those difficult times. It is also something we can
easily take for granted back home in the UK as Skype, Email and the telephone
is so readily available and easy to do and use. Not so here where we frequently
have no or poor Internet connection, no signal for telephone calls and very
infrequent and erratic postal service. This can make communication and keeping
up to date with news and events from home difficult and can prove frustrating
and upsetting particularly when people at home are suffering.
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| Sharing News |
This week when we collected the post from the post office,
always a treat we eagerly look forward too, we received late arriving Christmas
cards & parcels along with our son's wedding invitation for his wedding
which took place last November. But despite it being late it was still such a
treat to receive it. We know of other post that has been sent that has yet to
arrive, but it will eventually and when it does it will provide great
excitement and joy.
How very different from our open and always available communication
with God, there is never a problem contacting or talking with Him. His
communication channel is always available and He is always glad to hear from
us. As we start the New Year, uncertain and unsure of what challenges we may
face or what lies ahead of us, we do however know that we won't be able to
accomplish any of it in our own strength.
Thank you to all who have taken the time to write to us over
the past year and kept us up to date with all that is happening at home. We may
be a long way away but still like to know what is happening with you and in
your lives.
Blessings Malc & Sue