O Christmas Tree

Before we took it down (er, unraveled the lights, moved it back out into the sunlight, and hoped it would come back to life), we wanted to catch a picture of us sitting next to our first West African Christmas tree.

Family at Christmastime

We spent Christmas Eve with our teammates Henry and Ardell and their family. They served us a wonderful Christmas feast, complete with turkey, then we all gathered around the Christmas tree to exchange gifts.

The next day, our friends Todd and Rebecca invited us over for a yummy Christmas morning brunch.

Our new friends are quickly starting to feel like family, especially around the holidays. We have so much for which to be thankful.

It's beginning to smell a lot like...

... Christmas! Steve's baking Christmas cookies. We don't have any cookie cutters (that we know of), so he's using a knife to cut out shapes. I think he's doing a pretty good job: the trees look like trees, and you can't go wrong with a snowman.

... a barnyard! We had a pile of manure delivered to our house this week in order to start our garden. Now the house smells like a mixture of manure and compost, but it has to get worse before it gets better, right?

So Steve takes a break from his Christmas cookie preparations to give a gardening instruction or two to our guard, who's watering the garden like it's summertime. Who would have thought? Only in West Africa.