One of the greatest
joys of Christmas is gift giving. In Tanzania Christmas time is not full of
materialism, with advertisers filling your mail box with flyers and TV stations
running ads for things you or someone you know must surely “need”. Christmas
traditions here center around Christ and family. It is refreshing!
Families go
to church on Christmas morning and sometimes Christmas Eve also. Gift giving is
limited to children. When their parents can afford it, children get new clothes
and school supplies for Christmas, not toys or gadgets. Adults may give a
friend a Christmas card.
The
traditional Christmas meal includes rice, either plain or prepared as pilau,
rather than ugali (a thick corn meal mush), which is the staple of the
Tanzanian diet.
Had I not
known these traditions, I would have thought that the Christmas gifts given by
Food for His Children were rather insignificant. But by giving our project
families rice and school supplies we were “making” their Christmas. That was
fun!
On Dec. 23
and 24 we delivered, in Jesus’ name, the following gifts to our goat recipient
families:
¼
kilogram (about ½ pound) of rice per person in the family
2 exercise books, one pencil, and one pen per child in school
The
gratitude I could see in the eyes of some of the parents brought me to tears.
It also made it well worth spending long hours on roads that were rocky, muddy,
and sometimes imaginary.
Thank you
for your participation with Food for His Children in ministry to families that
have so little. May you be blessed as you give a blessing!
-Dr Margaret Thompson, DVM
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