Christmas Day 2011

I have to say that this Christmas was one of my favorites. I felt like in some ways we got to participate in the story of Christmas as we traveled to a village outside of Koutiala.

On the way we saw the wise men, though Dawson said it wasn't them since there were four, not three. Regardless, it was pretty cool to see these camels walking down the road.

Just so you can see how tall they are- here's the view from inside the car.

Inside the church building

Dawson started taking pictures so the next few are his. For some reason the kids started making this motion.

This is the church.

I like the artistic look to this one. Don't think D was trying to do this, but regardless, it's cool.

The only time the kids left us alone was when the camels passed by the church.

Our car was used to get people to and from the baptism after church. It was packed inside and out.

Best shot of a family picture.

Dawson wanted to take the whole family picture so here we are minus D.

21 people were baptized. How neat to have it done on Christmas. What a great way to celebrate!

Lily pads in the water. D had actually talked about wanting to be baptized. When we got to the "pond" D was less excited about it. He asked, "do you have to be baptized in that kind of water?" I told him no. He said, "maybe I'll just wait and do it at the pool one day." :)

This is the chief's son of the second village we went to that day. His son had swallowed a caustic substance that burned his esophagus which then scarred. He couldn't even swallow his own saliva when he came to our hospital. We were able to dilate his esophagus and now he is doing really well.

In Soun, we found this baby sheep that had no fear of people. It walked up to me as I was sitting talking with a family we treat at the hospital (not the chief's family) and I was easily able to pick it up. Dawson wanted to hold him. So here is our shepherd!

D with one of the kids we treat at the hospital.

One of the neatest things of the day was seeing Dawson in the village. He did so well. Since we were visiting several people, our car was at one house and we often were in another place. He would run back and forth as needed. He seemed genuinely happy. I was proud of how well they all did. I want them to be happy and comfortable with life here so it is encouraging to see them feel at ease. Another proud moment for me was hearing Dawson run out of the church full of excitement to tell Kenan that they had yellow rice for our lunch (which we ate at 4pm). Kenan wasn't overwhelmingly excited about the rice because he had just fallen out of the car and landed mouth first into the dirt. oops. Once his mouth was clean, though, he enjoyed his "favorite snack" as he said of the rice. (The rice is a special Malian meal served for weddings, holidays and other special occasions).

After our visits we went to pick up grain for our neighbor who has fields in the village where we were. They loaded three 100 kilo bags onto our car. Brett said they should add more, thankfully they didn't because as we drove away and hit our first bump, the roof rack broke. Apparently our car can support 660 lbs extra but the roof rack can't. Thankfully we made it to the church again before it damaged a lot of the roof. We moved them to the back of the car and finally headed for home.

It really was a fun day. The kids did really well and it was fun visiting patients in their homes. My parents being there really made a difference as well so that it was four adults on three kids. More hands always make life easier, as long as though hands are adults hands and not more kids. :)