Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We just wanted to wish all our friends and loved ones a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  We enjoyed our first Christmas in the Philippines as we learned how the Filipino people celebrate.  Festivities will start on Christmas Eve and go on until the wee hours of Christmas morning.  A wonderful meal is served around midnight which mainly consists of spaghetti and lechon (roasted pig).  We celebrated with several people from the church and had fun learning the different traditions of a Filipino Christmas.  While Christmas is an important holiday, the one that tops them all is New Years.  A lot of superstition surrounds the day and makes it a very unique celebration.  Families will gather, believing that having your family with you to ring in the New Year will mean that you will not be separated in the coming year.  As the clock strikes midnight, fireworks go off from just about every home, followed by car horns blaring, and pots and pans crashing in an attempt to scare off evil spirits.  It’s not like anything we have seen in the States.  It’s something even I had forgotten since I lived in America for so long.  We pray you all have a great time with your families as we anticipate another year to serve our Lord.