Christmas morning was spent opening homemade stockings stuffed with candy and other goods. I dug out a bar of soap from my stocking, which led me to believe that Santa is trying to give me a hint on the state of my body odors. The missionary women left after opening stockings to help the local Moru women at the church prepare the Christmas lunch. There was a noticeable excitement in the air as we rode our bikes down the dusty dirt road to church in an area called Mirikalanga. Christmas is when most of the children and youth receive new clothes for the year. Mundri had changed, if only for a day. I had grown accustomed to seeing children with torn shirts and no shoes wandering the streets, but today it was a struggle to find those children.
Church on Christmas morning was filled with random announcements, Moru Christmas songs, and a sermon from the Chancellor of a nearby town called Lui. Most of the service was a combination of Moru and Arabic, which made it pretty challenging to keep from nodding off during the long service. After the service all the "big men" (as the African people would say, which included white people) were ushered to a small mud hut to enjoy Christmas lunch. The church was able to afford a cow for the lunch in which all the "big men" of the service were given the choice cuts. Along with the sirloin steak that we were served, we were given biscuits and linea (a corn based food that has the consistency of dried mashed potatoes). It was truly the best Moru meal I have had in Mundri, with all utensils put aside. We ended the day greeting unfamiliar faces and drinking a sweet reddish purple hibiscus tea called keteh keteh. Whether all of the Moru community were true believers or not was not evident, but it was evident that they all knew why they were celebrating the 25th of December. This day was the day that they, along with the rest of the world, celebrated the day that Christ was born. The day that our hope of salvation from the sin and evil in this world first appeared.
