Our ISI Christmas party

You know how I lead the ISI (International Students Inc) for my church and how usually it is so fulfilling for me, but this year it has been harder because we have had so many students that it has gotten overwhelming for me. Well, we had a Christmas party (to be following by another Christmas party this Saturday) on Friday, and we had just 16 or 17 students (opposed to 38 for Thanksgiving and 42 for Halloween), and we had a wonderful time!

Our two main pastors of my church attended, along with the wife of the pastor I used to have a crush on. She is expecting their first baby, a boy (they just found out a week ago), so she is just starting to show. I am very happy for them because I have my own man now. But before dinner, I made a point of introducing the three of them to the students and telling them that while they see certain people every week they come, and I pointed out a couple, there are a lot of other people who are eager to support them from behind the scenes. Many people from my church care about them and pray for them regularly, and we believe that prayer is really talking to God and that God hears those prayers and answers them. The pastors have helped to introduce our group to others in the church who might be interested in coming to it, and they have given me guidance when I have had questions. And besides, at our big Thanksgiving dinner, we had so much food, including about 15 pies, and a lot of that food was donated by other people from the church who have never met them, but care about them and wanted to help them experience an American Thanksgiving. I thought this was valuable, so they could know that a lot of people care about them and not just the ones they see each time they come.

After dinner, I had everyone gather together in the living room, and I gave the Americans an opportunity (mentioned to them in advance to be thinking of in case they wanted to volunteer something) to share about their special memories of Christmas and what Christmas means to them. The most common theme was family, which I think was valuable because especially to those coming from Asian cultures where family is first and foremost above everything else, they tend to think of us Americans as not being very family-oriented as much. But hearing how we would do things together as a family meant a lot to the students.

Another common theme was baking. I talked about how my family always made Christmas candy, and we would package it up and give it to our teachers, the people who worked with the kids at church, our pastors, and family, and friends. We got to be really famous for our candy. We then asked our senior pastor if he remembered getting the candy and if it was any good, and he vociferously said, "YES!" I also told one story that really sticks with me. One of our candies is carmels. I can tell you the secret to them, but I didn't tell the students because we will be making the candy with them at Saturday's party. It was the idea of making Christmas candy that was the biggest draw to them! But the secret is that once the carmel is poured into the pan, you wait until it is just cool enough to handle with your hands, and then you put butter on your hands to keep them from burning, and you get a dollop of the carmel in your hand, spread it out, put two or three mini marshmellows inside, and wrap the carmel around it. Because it is so hot, it melts the marshmellows and is delectable!

The only problem is that after a few days, the carmels tend to get hard, so we have to put them in the microwave for a few seconds. My sophomore year of high school, we didn't give candy to my high school teachers because there were just too many of them, but we did put together a bag of carmels to give my biology teacher, whose husband was dying of bone cancer and lasted about a week past Christmas. She told me later that at the end, he couldn't eat anything that wasn't essentially pureed because he couldn't chew. But our carmels were so soft that he was able to chew them. So each day, she'd take one of the bag and give it to him, and that was his special treat for the day. I bet she didn't even eat a single one, knowing her. I bet she saved them all for her husband. And they stayed so soft that he could eat them, even when he couldn't eat other food! So each day, as he was dying, he got to have a special treat that was made by us. As she told me this story, her eyes teared up, and she started crying. She didn't know that she should have had to microwave the carmels to keep them soft. I believe that God purposely kept those particular carmels soft just so that this dying man could have a special treat in the last days of his life. So that is my particular Christmas miracle memory!

But others shared their own special memories of Christmas and often how they evolved from being excited about they were going to get for Christmas to being excited about seeing someone they care about opening the present that they got for that person for Christmas! I think the students really appreciate that too.

Next, we broke up into really small groups, and we borrowed some Bibles from church, so everyone got a Bible to look at, and each group went around the circle having each student read a Bible verse at a time and discuss what it means, so they could understand the story of what Christmas is all about. My group went really well. I was a tiny bit nervous because the younger pastor and his wife sat in with my group and even video taped part of it because they are going to put together a video of ISI to show to the church next Saturday and Sunday as they highlight the various ministries that you can become involved in at the church. Next Sunday they will be highlighting ISI! Usually they put the videos on the web, so if they do that, I'll post the link for you to see it once it is out. But I was a little bit nervous teaching the Bible story with a fully trained pastor sitting there, but I got complimented on what a good job I did.

In fact, there were a few people working in the kitchen, cleaning up after our dinner dishes and putting out our dessert items, and one of them is a college professor who teaches at an online university. She told me that she was so impressed by my teaching that I have a really great gift for teaching ESOL (English to speakers of other languages), so she sent me an email with a couple job listings for part-time tutors for ESOL stuff. One of them requires experience with K-12, and I'm not sure that they would be happy with just my having tutored one high school student for a year and a half, and I'd rather work with older students anyway. But the other looks promising. It is tutoring students in China over the Internet. You first have to be approved by the group that leads it, but they you post your ad with your qualifications, and you can set your own rates, your own hours, your own requirements, etc. So I figure I'll specify that I specialize in teaching students who want to attend university in America and want to become prepared for the American academic life. For one thing, that is my specialty, but for another, I bet very few other people who would respond to this would have such qualifications, and if they do, would think to list it that way. So I've decided I'm going to sign up for this tutoring job. I plan just to do a couple hours a week at first, but I can add more later if I like it. And it uses a webcam through their website, so I can work from home. Isn't that neat?

Getting back to our Christmas party, the next to last thing we did was sing Christmas carols. My aunt is an amazing pianist (and organist, but we don't have an organ, so she played the piano), so she led us in singing Jingle Bells, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Joy the World, Silent Night, Away in a Manger, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas. They really liked the verses in We Wish You a Merry Christmas demanding figgy pudding and saying "We won't go until we get some." I had to explain the background to those verses, and they thought that was pretty funny.

And then, our evening concluded with our following a tradition that we always had when I was a kid. We had a birthday cake for Jesus! My mom baked two cakes: one chocolate and the other vanilla, and she got candles for it that spelled out "Happy birthday!" They lit the candles, and we all sang Happy Birthday, and then we got some of the students to blow them out. My mom just warned them not to be like my Grandma Gewe, who would take so long to blow out her candles that they'd be melted by then. But I told them that her other problem is that she'd spit on them to get them to go out! So we'd have to try to pick parts of the cake that were nowhere near the candles.

But if you are Christians and have kids at home, that is a really special tradition and one I cherish. It always served to remind us just what all this celebration for Christmas was about. We were sky-high about getting to open our presents and hyper with all the other excitement, but having a birthday cake for Jesus put things in perspective. And now our international students got to participate in that too.

This Saturday, we are having another Christmas party with them, this time more relaxed and focused on participating in the fun things that people do to the run-up for Christmas. So for the first time in over 15 years, we will get a Christmas tree, and we will have the students decorate it! We have never been home before for Christmas, so we didn't bother with a tree once my brother and I were old enough for it not to be so important. But Andrew really wants a tree up for Marina to get to see when they arrive, since she has never gotten to see a "real" Christmas tree, just the kind that a few malls in Brazil put up. So the students will help put up the tree, and then we'll make some Christmas candy. I imagine carmels will be a must, but I'm not sure what else.

And we will conclude by watching March of the Wooden Soldiers. It's traditionally considered to be a Christmas movie, although it takes place in July. If you haven't seen that one, you really should. It's a great classic with Laurel and Hardy and takes place in Toyland, where they make all the toys for Santa Claus. And everyone in Toyland is part of children's nursery rhymes, so we will get to teach the students some of the American nursery rhymes. It stars Little Bo Peep, who lives with Old Mother Hubbard, who is also the little old woman who lives in a shoe and has so many children she doesn't know what to do. Bo Peep is in love with Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son. There are also the Three Little Pigs. There's the cat and the fiddle, although I haven't figured out why he is always seen with a mouse, since there was no mouse in that nursery rhyme. There is Barnaby, the meanest old man, but I don't know a nursery rhyme about him. Does anyone here know about that? They had to have a bad guy for the movie, so I suspect they made one up. There's also Old King Cole. But you also have to beware the Boogeymen! It's just a really cute movie and one that I grew up watching over and over and over!

So we have had a lot of fun with the students, and they are looking forward a lot to next Saturday!

you sound like you had a n amazing time, vicky, wow what a social life you have!!