Our Christmas Celebration

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve we woke up early and got to work. We had to prepare the house for a fifteen-person Christmas party! There was a great sense of community during the day – if there was something that needed done, someone would find it and do it right away. It was one of the first days here where it started to feel like all of the volunteers were a family. And it was just in time for Christmas, so it helped ease the homesickness as much as it could.

There was so much cooking to do! Much like at home, the Polish spend all day in the kitchen before a holiday because there are many traditional foods. So in between deep cleaning the party area and outside their house we pitched in a lot.

It was the first Christmas either of us has had such a big part of the Christmas cooking. As I learn more and more about cooking (especially through this mission crash course), I realize how time-consuming it is and what a skill it is. So Mom, especially on holidays, thank you for all the cooking you do so selflessly. Wow, it’s a lot of work, but it all pays off in the end! When I get home I will definitely help you more with my newly developed skills.

Along with cooking in the kitchen there was a fire pit to be dug and Brendan and Therese volunteered immediately! They used a shovel to dig a decent sized hole and found grasses, wood, and coconut pieces to start a fire with. Then they cooked fresh fish in tin foil and it came out perfect! The whole time there were kids along the fence and even in the trees trying to see what was going on.

Brendan and Therese starting a fire.

And besides the cooking and cleaning, there was decorating to do. We were pretty proud of how it turned out. My job was cutting out paper stars so we could put them on the ceiling. When Brendan and Therese were done with the fish they came in to help with the stars – Therese made a big 3-D one we hung in the middle of the room and Brendan helped put the stars on the ceiling : )

The final product! No big lights or flashy decorations, but we were pretty proud. And when there was food on the tables, candles strategically placed along the walls, and people filling the chairs, it was everything we’d hoped for.

Around 6:30 people starting showing up and we drank strawberry Fanta and walked around to meet everybody. There were people from all over the world and all ages volunteering with different organizations. So the meeting and greeting was pretty interesting. The common thread for everyone was that they knew either Dogmara or Cass, the twenty-two year old Australian girl who was working with the Catholic churches in the area doing street ministry.

When everyone had come in, we started it off with the Christmas story. First Bernadette read it in English and then Chris in Polish. And we all prayed together for Christmas and for the people of East Timor. It was a little funny, because I think we shocked some of the other volunteers, some of whom were with the UN and non-religious NGOs. I hope we helped them remember what Christmas really is (Jesus’ birthday)!

Before we ate we did something very special that Brendan and I had never heard of. Poland is a very Catholic country and has many beautiful and deep traditions dealing with Christmas. In Poland, before the meal, each person gets a thin piece of bread that resembles Communion host. Then you go around to each person and if there’s anything to say sorry for they make up and then everyone makes wishes for the other person’s Christmas and coming year. After both people have made their wishes, they each rip a piece off the other person’s bread and eat it. It was one of my favorite things about Christmas Eve.

Brendan caught Sali and I trading good wishes for our year in East Timor.
By then everybody was hungry so we dug into the meal. The foods that were different for us were the traditional Polish foods. There have to be at least twelve dishes in the Christmas meal – for the twelve apostles. And it’s tradition that you don’t eat meat on Christmas Eve, just fish. Besides fish, some of the other things we had were borscht (beet soup), crockets (folded pastries with vegetables and noodles inside), and kopitka (pastries with potato inside). All these foods took a long time to make, but were delicious

So we all ate and shared stories about our experiences in East Timor. There was a lot of laughing and fun, and, before we knew it, it was time to head down the street to Christmas Eve Mass. Mass started at 9pm and we were already unofficially late because it was 8:30 and the church was already overflowing with people (literally – there were hundreds of people inside, people standing on sides, and hundreds of people standing and sitting outside the church). Luckily Dogmara had explained the situation to us, so we had brought our own plastic chairs from the house.

We made it just in time to see the nativity play by some of the youth. There were Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus, the shepherds, adorable angels in pink tutus with wands that swayed their wands with the songs, and the three wisemen dressed at Timorese kings. Everything was the same as at home, but with the Timorese twist that always keeps things interesting.

The Mass was special so it went for more than two hours with lots of beautiful singing and readings from Scripture. Unfortunately, I was so tired from running around all day that I had to fight off falling asleep! After Mass, Brendan and I were exhausted and fell asleep immediately.

Christmas!

We woke early and refreshed and surprised each other with gifts – Then we got ready quick to go to Mass again. In East Timor, what we heard and saw was that the people all go to Christmas Eve Mass, stay up after and have big family get togethers, and then about half of them come back again for Mass at 7:30 in the morning. So we went back and got there early enough to get real seats (the other volunteers were not as ambitious and forgot their chairs, so they ended up standing for two hours again).

Mass was beautiful…again. It was nice to have a second chance to enjoy it while we were more awake. Christmas Mass is all about Jesus and there is so much joy! And at the end of Mass on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day they did something very special. It was similar to what we do on Good Friday (the day that Jesus died), when we all go up and put a hand on the cross or kiss the cross to say thank you to Jesus. Here in East Timor, everyone at Mass lined up to kiss baby Jesus! We all came up to the front and kissed a little statue of baby Jesus.

We feel so honored to be here. It’s difficult to think of ourselves as missionaries, because here we are the ones being inspired and encouraged by the faith of the people themselves. Hopefully we can encourage them in their faith in some small way by our witness of being here and by having the same love that they have for Jesus.

But that was only the beginning of the day. We ate leftovers for breakfast and then worked on wrapping pens and pencils in tissue paper for Christmas presents for the kids at the Baucau hospital. Cass and a friend came over to help with the process, and her and I were able to talk.

Cass is 22 also, but is already an occupational therapist (in Australia you only need a Bachelor’s Degree for it). As soon as she finished she started volunteering with VOICA and went to East Timor. After she finished her time she was asked to stay by the local parishes to continue her outreach with the street kids in Baucau and the surrounding villages. She is hardcore and I have a great respect for her.

Once the presents were ready we walked to the Baucau Hospital. It was a very interesting experience from having volunteered in three different American hospitals and comparing them to this hospital.

The first big difference was that there was almost no staff at the hospital. We saw maybe two staff the whole time we were there. It was Christmas, so many of them were probably at home, but the ratio of staff to patients seemed very different from the U.S.

The facilities were also very different. There were three or four different buildings with long walkways connecting them. We walked down the hallways and saw rooms labeled for malaria cases, respiratory problems, intensive care, etc. Each room had four to six beds in a small space, but there would be twenty or twenty-five people in the room.

This is probably the biggest cultural difference between our hospitals and their hospitals. The families of the patients come to live with them at the hospital, to make sure that they are fed and cared for! They become the volunteer hospital staff. Dogmara was telling us about children who lived with their mom in the hospital for two years while she was sick. They’d eat there, leave for school, and come back to take care of their mom.

Initially, it was difficult for me to see how dirty the facilities were and thinking about the nightmare of trying to control the spread of disease with people always coming in and out and living there. But those are just the academic worries.

On the other side, I’m sure that the comfort of having your family around and caring for you may balance the disadvantage of controlling contagions. I’m not sick often, but when I am, even a few days of bedrest is enough to leave you feeling isolated and sometimes depressed. It really challenges what you think about human dignity – do I have innate, God-given worth or am I only worth something if I’m productive? Hopefully everyone knows they have a ton of God-given worth, but when you’re sick, it’s easy to have doubts. Having your family stay with you probably eases those worries because even if you can’t “do” much, you’re still an important part of a community. Who knows, if they had better medical resources, their family-style hospital stays might be more effective than ours for healing long term illness.

But honestly, spending Christmas giving presents to the kids at the hospital floored me. I was still a little homesick, but I can’t imagine a better way to spend Christmas than doing that with Brendan.

We entered the rooms, said our “Boas Festa Natal” to everyone, and passed out school supplies, chocolate, and lollipops to the kids, especially the kids that were patients. The first hallway we went down there were many infants (who probably would just try to eat the pens and pencils), but we were able to give presents to the tired-looking moms. It was difficult in the malaria room because many of the children were very young and looked like they were in a lot of pain. Another painful part was hearing that the Last Rites were being done for a child in the intensive care unit.

The best part of the trip was the surprised looks on the faces that we got when we came in. None of the patients were expecting us or that they would get anything for Christmas. Many of them were very shy when we showered them with little gifts, but you could tell they were very happy. But we didn’t get to surprise everyone. Soon word spread among the kids that there was candy to be had and we got to throw lollipops to the four and five-year-olds crowded in the hallway : )

But the part that touched me the most and almost brought me to tears, was meeting a dad who had been in the hospital for four months with his two little daughters. The three of them were sitting on a bench and I sat down to say hi and try to talk. Through the conversation he explained that their family had been in the hospital because his youngest daughter, who was sitting on his lap smiling, had her lower right leg blown off in an explosion. He said it was a bomb in the ground, so I’m thinking like some type of land mine. And I was speechless…

But these kind of Christmas experiences make me think of Christmas in a deeper way than before. Thank goodness that Jesus came to give hope to the suffering. He is everything we need. Please pray for that little girl and her family, and for all the people who spend their Christmas in the hospital.

Our time at the hospital was all too short, but you could tell that the people and especially the kids appreciated our visit. We walked back across town still processing what we had seen.

But there wasn’t much time to process because we were still going to try to make it to the beach for Christmas! We had heard that the Baucau beach was especially beautiful, so we wanted to see it before heading back the next day. So we packed a picnic lunch and Therese, Dogmara, Chris, Brendan, and I started the hour long hike to the beach.

On the way we saw lots of kids just hanging out with their families and friends for Christmas. Most of them just shouted “Malae, malae” (foreigner, foreigner) at us and waved and smiled, but these kids had a slight variation. When they saw us coming they shouted “Foto? Foto?” and Brendan was glad to oblige

We finally made it to the beach and the view was worth every bit of the walk. The sand was soft, and the water warm and inviting.

We were playing around in the water when the cry when up from the local kids “Lafaek, lafaek!” A crocodile! We were out of the water in a flash, deciding it was a perfect time for our picnic. We were a little skeptical until we saw the nose of a crocodile rise out of the water. We hung out on the beach with the locals, watching the crocodile get slowly nearer. Every ten minutes or so it would poke its nose out of the water and be in a new spot a few meters closer.

Every time the nose poked out of the water it sent a shiver through us and a healthy dose of fear as you can see. Ok, this picture was posed, but it was a little scary to see a crocodile in the wild for the first time.

We saw this sign after we got in. It says be careful when you swim here and has the picture of the crocodile.

The Timorese have an interesting relationship with crocodiles and respect them a lot because of a legend. There was a boy who was walking along and saw a baby crocodile who was dying because he could not make it to the ocean. So the boy took pity on the crocodile and carried him to the ocean, where he recovered. Later the boy was near the beach when he saw his friend the crocodile, who had grown up. The crocodile offered to take the boy on his back wherever he wanted to go to repay him for saving his life.

Over time they became great friends and when the crocodile was dying from old age he said that he would always carry the boy and his descendents on his back. When the crocodile died the island of Timor rose out of the sea (Timor is shaped like a crocodile) and boy’s descendents (the Timorese) have lived there ever since.

The Timorese call the crocodile, avo, or grandfather, and when crossing a river some will call out, “Don’t eat me avo, I am your grandchild!” It’s said that when you come across a crocodile if you think good thoughts, he won’t eat you. It’s not an experiment that we’re going to try though, we promise. So…I’d bet five dollars that none of you had a Christmas experience like this : )

After a couple of hours at the beach we were lucky enough to get a ride home with some friends we had met at the Christmas party the night before. We got home just in time to change and head out to the Baucau convent where we had been invited for Christmas dinner.

We made it to the convent where there was a small, Asian-Christmas feast of rice, noodles, and even some meat. The meat was especially nice, because it’s expensive here, so we don’t get too much of it. Here we are ready to dig in!

After dinner Brendan and I started off a singing fest. We wowed them with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (with the kids’ part) and then sang O Holy Night with Therese and Bernedette.

We also played a game where you pass around a holly branch as fast as you can while the music is on and when the music stops, whoever has the branch has to stand up and tell the story of their favorite Christmas.

Group picture before we headed home to pack for the trip home the next morning and get some sleep. This was probably the craziest Christmas we’ve ever had : )
We hope your Christmas was great too!


Love always,

Rachel and Brendan