a long journey before Christmas

One perk of missionary life is that you get all sorts of interesting stuff left behind when fellow missionaries move or downsize. We inherited a couple small artificial Christmas trees, and quite an eclectic assortment of used pieces of Christmas wrapping paper, homemade paper snowflakes, candles and decor, and a small stuffed Santa.

I started getting some things in shape for decorating, such as washing Santa and the red napkin and hanging them out to dry. We also have the more precious Christmas items we brought from home -- stockings for the boys, a couple photo ornaments, and a small stack of December books about things like Christmas and snow.

But nothing is going to be getting decorated quite yet. Because instead of getting ready for Christmas here in Bangui, we will be decorating for Christmas in a new house, out west in the small town of Berberati! After waiting for months to hear if and whether we would be moving, we finally have the word that we are indeed going to move. Around Dec. 12 or 13, we should be making the all-day journey across CAR, along with our colleagues Neil and Esther and Kathleen, to our new home. A new chapter of life is about to begin.

Starting to get ready for a big move reminds me a littlel of Mary and Joseph and the trip they took to Bethlehem just before the first Christmas. Travelling always carries with it a sense of the unknown, and yet we know that God will be going with us and will be preparing the way before us. And He has many purposes, most that we probably have no idea about yet, for why He is bringing us to a new place.