Children's Choir... Asian Style

Merry Christmas

Suk San Wan Kis Sa Mas

I do hope that everyone is having sweet fellowship with family and friends. 

Our Christmas Eve was the first day off we have really had since Thanksgiving, so we enjoyed it thoroughly. We delivered cookies to some of our friends around town. Melody and I made homemade pizza for our Christmas Eve meal, grabbed our hymnals and went caroling to some beautiful friends of ours here in town, ended the night watching "Meet Me in St. Louis", and before bed we spent some time on skype chattin with the fam.

For Christmas Day we woke up and the 3 of us roomies exchanged our gifts and I made french toast. We got all dressed up in our Asian attire and headed to a service held here in town. One of my favorite things about living here is watching locals get excited about worshiping our Father. So much joy in the fact that our Savior chose to save us in this way. In the form of a baby boy, born into our mess to save us from our sin and rebellion. 

Being away from home/America during this time has of course been difficult in many ways. I miss my beautiful family and my hilarious friends so very much. But it has been helpful in many ways to really view this holiday for what it is instead of what American culture has made it out to be. The locals here have no idea what Christmas in America looks like. They have no idea of our traditions and customs, so being included in their own Christmas traditions and customs has been such a blessing to my heart this season. They celebrate all month long and this week you can find a celebration/service every evening and every morning. They truly just want to worship Father and use this time (that officials have allowed them to have) to celebrate in multitudes the miraculous birth of our Savior.

This video was taken at a local Christmas celebration on the 23rd. In my eyes its the closest thing to a children's choir you can get here. This celebration was such a beautiful picture of the body coming together to truly prepare their hearts for the birth of Christ and what this holiday truly means. These kids were absolutely adorable performing their "faoun" or dance, and I just had to share with y'all. The little guy in the middle is obviously the center of attention....

The lyrics to many hymns have been in my head for awhile now (mainly because we have sung them throughout the house and on road trips since Thanksgiving), but the words have never meant so much to me as they have this Christmas. I leave you with a few of my favorite verses to 3 of my favorite Christmas Hymns.

O holy child of Bethlehem! Descend to us we pray; cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today! We hear the Christmas angels, the great glad tidings tell; O come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Immanuel!

Come to Bethlehem, and see Him whose birth the angels sing; Come, adore on bended knee Christ the Lord, the newborn KING.

Silent night, holy night, Son of God, Love's pure light. Radiant beams from thy holy face, with the dawn of redeeming grace.

JESUS, LORD AT THY BIRTH!

"For to us a child is born, 

to us a son is given"

Isaiah 9:6

Don't knock it till you try it!

You know that saying….. “Don’t knock it till you try it.” I have said this many times in my life about a bunch of different foods. One thing I enjoy eating in the states is ketchup with mac n cheese. I know, I know, but…… Don’t knock it till you try it! Right? Everybody has their weird combo of foods that someone down the line said to you, “Don’t knock it till you try it.” And if your brave enough to try it, sometimes you find out that you like it and sometimes you find out that you were right in thinking it looked gross. But in those situations, the saying holds true. You receive permission in a way after you have tried something to speak negative words towards it.

Well where I live now, that phrase has brought on a whole new meaning to my life, and honestly a whole new level of bravery in exploration of foods. I have been lucky because there have been just a few times since I have been here when I literally didn’t know what I was eating, but to be kind and gracious to the host….. I ate it with a smile, I might not have finished it, but I ate until I was no longer hungry.

Tonight was a little different. I knew exactly what I was eating and it was a little bit harder to eat it with a smile, or eat until I was not hungry. 

Some friends took us to a special restaurant in that it served dog meat. I have had dog meat before, it’s not my favorite, but it’s not terrible, so at this point I wasn’t completely freaked out. (not excited, but not freaked out) We sat down and we all were engaged in some fun conversations when the plate came out. It was a small plate full of tiny pieces of grilled food. I recognized the dog meat, but there was one other thing on the plate I was not so sure of.

Our host put a piece of the unknown substance in each of our bowls. In my head I thought, “Don’t ask what this is because if you know you won’t want to eat it.” But my mouth spoke before I could tell it to stop. I asked what it was as I picked it up with my chopsticks. Mel looked at me and said, “I think it’s dog innards.” This is the point when I lowered my chopsticks and second guessed this whole situation. I examined it more closely and yes, yes it was dog innards. What particular innard, you might ask? Well I don’t know, maybe intestine, maybe liver, maybe stomach, maybe all of the above, who knows. Our host pointed at the “jao” which is basically a form of Asian hot sauce. I smiled dipped it in the jao and mustered up every form of food bravery I could manage and ate it. It was chewy, it was different, it was a little spicy, and it was tolerable.

My natural instinct is to avoid these crazy things all together. I wouldn't say that I go out and try to find situations in which I can eat these foods. I only eat them if they are given to me and it would be rude not to eat. But I think I do have a little bit of pride that pushes me to try these new things and be able to hold it down. I'm not gonna lie, that pride helps in situations like these. Maybe its competition with myself to see if I can eat all of these different foods, I don't know, but it sure came in handy when I ate the 3rd or 4th piece. I moved onto the dog meat after it looked like I had enjoyed the innards. Ironically, the meat was a pleasant change. I'm not a texture person. I can handle something that doesn't taste good, what I can't handle is something that feels disgusting in my mouth. I can now say that dog meat AND dog innards are both in the bad texture but tolerable taste category. Both are tolerable when I am given it to eat (and I know now that I can eat it with a smile), but lets make it clear that I will not be ordering a plate of either one of these for myself.... ever.

The girls that I was with have lived here for awhile and are use to being served these different foods, so they were eating them much more quickly then I was able to, so that gave me hope that one day I will have had plenty of experience and built up a sense of food tolerance. 

Thank you SE Asia for your (always exciting) food choices. You keep me on my toes and make me check my bravery on occasion. 

It's like this culture reminds me of the saying... Don't knock it till you try it!