I know it’s a little late, but I was looking at the videos I took over the last little while and thought it would be worth it to show the video from the Christmas program at the kids’ school. It’s only about 3 minutes long.
Here are a few things to note before you watch:
Our coworker Rod Fry was asked to lead the children in a couple of songs. They did a really good job. You’ll hear "Joy to the World", and then a song to the tune of "Jingle Bells". The words to both are different in Spanish. In the first, you’ll hear Jesus gives forgiveness, for example. The second is totally different in this popular Spanish song. You’ll hear bells, but the song isn’t about bells. For example, when Hannah’s trio sings, some of the words are: I love you, my Jesus, I will sing your glories, I will rejoice this happy day. Then the chorus starts Christmas, Christmas, today is Christmas…
This past semester Rod and I were talking to the English teacher about some of the music the kids learn and learn about. I don’t know if that discussion had anything to do with it, but there was an unusual amount of religious music in this program! For an English song, one class sang Paul Wilbur’s "Up to Jerusalem", a song based on Scripture (Psalm 122). (If you look closely, you’ll see someone in a devil costume singing that one – more on that later!)
Nathanael was a shepherd, Hannah a shepherdess. They wore typical costumes for their roles.
The Christmas story was also pretty typical… although it may not be what you’re familiar with if you just read the account in the Bible. In this version, the shepherds (pilgrims), from a far away land, follow the star to Bethlehem. But while they travel, a devil tries to trick them while an angel tries to stop the devil. (You might argue that the devil and angel are probably historical realities. However, the typical portrayal of a devil in a red suit trying sneaky but usually harmless tricks on the shepherds leaves something to be desired! The devil is almost always the most popular character in these Christmas programs…)
Well, I’ll let you figure out the rest for yourself! Enjoy. 😉
All right, so we’ve done a lot of work over the holidays. We’ll try again to get a real break in February, Lord willing. But we were able to sneak in a few minutes of relaxation here and there. Here are a few shots from the last few days…
Nathanael loses his second tooth
Playing with new race tracks with friends
Hanging out on our street
Nathanael and his new LEGO boat
Red and yellow underwear for sale at the mall To find out why, click here
We just got back from visiting the doctor. Nathanael’s finger is healing nicely, though it will probably be a few months before he has a fingernail there again. No doubt it will be sensitive for a long time.
We’re changing the bandage every day, and it’s become a lot easier the last day or two as the wound has closed a lot more.
And more good news – Nathanael isn’t taking any more medicine for it. He sure hated the "pink medicine" which he finally finished on Monday!
In the picture you can see Nathanael and the paediatrician, Dr. Lechuga. The doctor is just putting some new bandaging on Nathanael’s finger. It didn’t hurt. Much.
Monday was the day of Hannah and Nathanael’s Christmas program at their school. It was in the evening, and they were just finishing a quiet time and Shari was just about to serve lunch.
And that’s when Nathanael got his finger caught in the door.
We were able to get to the doctor right away. The doctor put some freezing in the finger (two needles – definitely one of the low points of the day for Nathanael!), cleaned it and bandaged it up.
To make a long story short – and without getting to graphic – Nathanael lost his fingernail and the tip of his finger. Not too much of it – the doctor thinks it should pretty much grow back to normal, thanks to the way fingers are designed and the angle on which it was cut off.
Speaking of which, it really is the grace of God how our fingers are designed! Injuring the ends of our fingers isn’t such an unusual thing – after all, we touch things with them all the time! And yet there’s mostly skin and fat, with non-crucial endings of nerves and of course blood vessels (boy, fingers sure can bleed! Oh, sorry. We won’t talk about that any more). So for the most part injuries there can heal relatively quickly.
So set your mind at ease – in the title of this post, I was talking actually about the end of Nathanael’s finger – I wasn’t saying it was gone forever!
That being said, obviously Nathanael has had to and will have to put up with a lot of things (like pain)! He is taking something for the pain. And he’s been generally doing very well. Thankfully he’s been sleeping well at night, and was even able to go to his Christmas program.
Speaking of the Christmas program, we were a little late but we made it before the school doors even opened. Nathanael went up and down the line showing off his finger. The kids thought it was the coolest thing ever.
Nathanael as a shepherd
And Hannah and Nathanael both did a great job. Maybe I can show you some pictures and even video later. They were both shepherds. (I told Nathanael he should tell the other kids that a sheep bit his finger, but he didn’t think that would be honest.) 😉
There was a slight bad interlude during a performance where the kids in Nathanael’s class were supposed to hold hands – and his hand got twisted – but he got over it quickly and did a fine job.
So we’re headed back to the doctor this morning to have his finger checked and the bandage changed and all that. I’m sure Nathanael would appreciate your prayers over the next little while!
The rest of the family is still a little sick too (aside from Hannah, who almost never gets sick). But perhaps we can all chat with the doctor this morning. 🙂
Big changes are in store for Nathanael! For all of us, actually.
This school year began as a bit of a trial run. Nathanael needs extra rest because of health concerns, and we knew that he would be getting a lot less rest with longer school hours.
In fact, he did better than expected in many ways. He’s been learning a lot, he’s been doing better with his homework – there has been a lot of good news. And it’s been fun having Hannah and Nathanael in the same school for the first time since the spring of 2008.
However, things haven’t been going as well at the school. There’s no need to go into a lot of details, but we’ve been trying to work with the teachers and leadership of the school to make sure he’s getting the education he needs. There have been a lot of meetings, and a lot of prayer, but things have gotten to the point where we feel we need to make a change.
So, in short, Nathanael will not be going back to the school in January. We considered putting him into another school, but we feel that more change and adjustment is not what he needs right now.
So at this point, he will be continuing English and Spanish education at home. We may look for some help with that. We hope to put him into one or more programs (such as swimming lessons again) as well.
He will also have more opportunity for interaction with neighbourhood kids (there are a lot of them!) since he won’t be spending hours doing homework each night.
It will take time to get all the details worked out – and it will be something we’re taking one day at a time. This isn’t necessarily a forever decision either. For both Hannah and Nathanael we’ve taken things one year at a time (while thinking about the future, of course).
There’s no doubt this will be a drastic adjustment for all of us. If you know Nathanael, you know that he needs constant supervision, which means one of us will need to be helping him almost all the time. Leave him for 20 seconds – and who knows what may happen! 😉
So we would appreciate your prayers as we make these changes.
Meanwhile, Hannah and Nathanael are at their school for the last day – well, half a day – practising for the Christmas program! Then the Christmas program takes place on Monday night. Then – holidays!
Some days just don’t turn out like you expect. All right, around here no day turns out how you expect.
Actually, the whole weekend ended up being a bit strange.
We had wanted to go to a special Christmas dinner on Saturday night. It’s a special dinner for Christian workers in the Mexico City area. But I felt we were rather over reaching our limits as a family – we were getting pretty over-tired. So we made the difficult decision on Friday to miss the event.
On Saturday morning, Nathanael woke up sick – very sick. I won’t get into details, but he was down and we were madly cleaning up after him.
Suddenly, 2/3 of the way through the day, *poof* he was better. Oh, he still looked a little weak, but he had all his energy back (just when Mom and Dad were completely exhausted from caring for him while he was still sick!).
Now, I had a lot of work to do to get ready to lead the service on Sunday. And then José asked if I would lead the communion service as well. So by the end of the day I was trying to get around to doing that (but of course there wasn’t much hope until the kids were in bed!).
The next morning I finished preparing (sorta) and we decided to keep Nathanael home, which meant Shari would stay with him. Hannah and I went early so I could get to my music practice.
I was just stepping out the door when I got a message from David – could I bring my laptop so we could put the lyrics of the songs up on the screen? (Recently we somehow got a projector – used it for the first time the week before)
So I packed up the laptop and left, a little late.
We started practising – almost all new songs. For some reason, around here we rarely sing Christmas songs around Christmas. Actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever been to a Sunday morning service with straight Christmas songs since we moved here (this is our 5th Christmas here). So these were all new songs to me.
Some new because I’d never played them. But quite a few new just because I’d never even heard them before.
Then I got a phone call – Rod. Apparently our preacher was sick, so we had no sermon. No problem, I said. We’ll do something.
Then back to the music practice. Ummm… David? I have the laptop… how are we going to get the words onto it?
So, David started working on that. Some typing, and… wait… he had some lyrics on his iPod. So he transferred some of those, formatted, and so on, and so on (hey, this is cutting our practice short! These are new songs!!)…
Uh oh. I just was wondering – if I’m leading the communion service, do I need to have everything prepared for it as well? The cups and….
So, I was off to the store to buy the food and drink for the communion service (tostadas are basically unleavened bread, right?). Then I delegated and asked someone else to get it all ready, while I figured out what to do for the sermon time.
*Poof* the computer program David had been using to put the lyrics in closed, and he hadn’t saved anything. Back to square one.
Back to the iPod, transferring lyrics. I looked up passages and prepared for a time of discussion in place of the sermon. Hoping Rod would help (which he was happy to do).
It was after 10am (the start of the service). The good news was that most people still hadn’t arrived. So I dictated the lyrics to two of the songs while David typed them in. We gave up on PowerPoint (no, actually I use OpenOffice Presentation) and stuck with scrolling through pages on Word (er… no, OpenOffice Text). While we typed and copied, we saved it lots.
Mayra was kind enough to operate the laptop. Rod was kind enough to remove the door (we take the door off every Sunday because the room is so small we need all the space we can get). The other David and I put up the screen. All of a sudden there was a full room, and we hadn’t started yet. I grabbed my notes and apologized, and we were off and running.
After my brief introduction, we were into the songs. What I didn’t know was that David had – well, he used the lyrics that he had on his iPod, which were not necessarily songs we had practised. So each song was a new and wonderful surprise for me.
Now, these songs weren’t necessarily all that familiar to David either, so I felt that a strong keyboard track was important. But not only were these songs I had never played, and songs I had never heard… they were also not the easiest songs in the world. And they were written in Latin Music Notation. English Notation is A-B-C and so on. Latin is Do-Re-Mi. Now I’m more or less familiar with the latin notation by this time – but when you’re playing a song you don’t know which has lots of chords fast… well… the music on Sunday was interesting. Let’s say … it was a little creative.
The rest of the service went all right, I think. During the sermon time, we centred our discussion loosely around the prophecies of the Messiah in Isaiah 9-12. We had some good discussions both about the passages, and about other far-flung topics.
For example, Rod was reamed out about his country’s strange obsession with Santa Claus. Of course, this is one case in which Canada is just as guilty as charged as the USA.
You see, in Mexico, Santa is more of an imported tradition. Generally speaking, the gifts are not given on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, but on Epiphany – the 6th of January, here known as Three Kings Day.
You know, give gifts when the Magi did. Kinda makes sense.
Now, Mexico is arguably just as guilty as many other countries when it comes to secularization and detaching Christmas from anything to do with the Gospel. But you’ve got to admit, linking gift giving to the wise men is a little more of a direct connection than some jolly old elf in a red suit. (After all, how many people would even know who I was talking about if I mentioned the Bishop of Myra?)
No wonder some Mexicans are baffled by the strange tradition of Santa Claus that so many Christians in the rest of North America seem so attached to!
(Not sayin’ it’s good or bad or neutral, just trying to help you see things from their perspective)
Er… yeah… speaking of getting off topic…
There were lots of other things going on that I won’t even get into – handing things out, talking to people about this and that. It was a good service in the end, actually. People had some great things to share. We had some good times in the Scripture. You know, all that good stuff.
When I got home, I found that Nathanael had maintained his energy (which meant that Shari hadn’t!) and the day continued at a typical fast pace.
No, there aren’t any typical days around here. But we wouldn’t want to be bored, would we?
