In my North American world, Starbucks is selling Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Peppermint Mocha Cappuccinos. Thanksgiving with its bountiful feast is quickly approaching. The Christmas decorations, for sale since August, have been discounted. Radio stations are playing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “Rudolph,” and hopefully “Silent Night.” Kids and teachers have been counting down the days until Christmas break since right after Halloween.
Church calendars are full, and families are making holiday plans: Who is bringing what to which dinner? (“You provide the turkey for Thanksgiving, and I’ll bring the ham for Christmas.”) What about the gift exchange this year? When is the candlelight Christmas service?
In my West African world, rainy season has finally ended. I’m thankful that I no longer have to carry buckets of water to do laundry, because we now have enough sunshine to power our solar water pump. It’s very green here, lush and beautiful. Dry season dust hasn’t started to descend yet. No snow in sight.
I’m not decorating for the holidays this year. The kids are grown and stateside. Our beloved teammate from another country doesn’t celebrate American Thanksgiving because it’s not her holiday. She doesn’t celebrate Christmas, either. She thinks the U.S. has lost sight of what Christmas really means, and she may be right.
Still, I’m homesick again, and I know I’m not alone.
You see, I grew up in North America — in Indiana, to be precise. My husband and I own a home in Michigan. Our adult daughters do their laundry there and store stuff in our garage. I’m from a tightly knit extended family that gets together at least once a year — and always at Christmas. One of my cousins is probably already planning this year’s Christmas menu. Playing euchre together is a must. (But watch out that my brother doesn’t cheat as usual!)
The beautiful decorations and presents are great. I do miss them. But it’s my loved ones and our traditions that I miss the most.
Our first Christmas on the field was the worst. I cried myself to sleep on Christmas Eve after attending six hours of our African church’s celebration. That was 30 years ago.
Then our kids came. I stopped crying and worked to make the holidays special for them. For years, I carried the Christmas stockings my brother’s wife made us back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean to give our kids continuity. We hung our felt nativity poster on the wall in the dining room and got out our PlaySchool nativity set so our littles could put Baby Jesus to bed. The girls made candy canes out of red, green, and white pipe cleaners. We had a little 3’ Christmas tree in the living room.
The woman who came to teach our girls for a while —we called her Grandma — started our tradition of giving out snacks in our village neighborhood to celebrate “the season of giving.”
Our missionary teammates in West Africa gathered in the capital for meetings every December. As a group we created our own unique Christmas traditions and became family for each other. My husband and a teammate made fruitcakes for the few who actually liked them. Another showed herself to be the queen of cookie decorating. One couple wrote a missionary version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” complete with vultures on the guesthouse roof.
I wrote and directed the kids’ Christmas programs, complete with fancy costumes. This gave our kiddos experience being in front of others. It also provided videos and photos for parents to send home to all the grandparents. But most importantly, we read the Christmas story and prayed together.
In short, we worked hard to build our family and group holiday traditions here in our West African world.
But these never fully took away the homesickness for my North American world, especially when my mom repeatedly said, “We wish you were here.” Some of the other missionary moms felt the same way. Our conversations went from “Wouldn’t it be great to have real chocolate chips? Not chocolate bars that we cut up?” to “In my home church, my small group would be…” or “My mom always….”
I’m not writing this to make you feel guilty for your joyful celebrations. Nor do I want you to feel sorry for us. That’s not my point. We and our missionary teammates have chosen to be where we are.
I’ve written this to ask you to pray for us and our teammates all around the world, especially those of us with rich, deeply rooted holiday traditions, as we move through the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. Pray for God to comfort us in our homesickness. Pray for good phone or internet connections so we can Zoom with our families.
We built our family and group holiday traditions here in our West African world. Yet they never took away my homesickness for my North American world.
Pray also for our witness to the nonbelievers all around us who need to see the true meaning of Christmas through us. Pray for us to rejoice with our national brothers and sisters in Christ. Most of all, please pray for precious moments that build our resilience and strength to carry us through another year on the field.
From my West African home, I wish you a blessed Thanksgiving and a beautiful celebration of Messiah’s birth!
