What are your christmas plans?

To my Dear Young friends:
Well, Christmas kind of snuck up on me this year. People have been asking: "What are your Christmas plans?" But I was just living day to day, in the midst of a move and a serious conflict with threats to my life. In my new little temporary apartment I put up a Christmas tree and a little nativity scene. The lights on the little tree did their best to cheer me up, but I knew it would be a hard holiday season. In fact, those lights just seemed to be a mockery, reminding me of much more joyful Christmases, long ago and far away. So here it is today, Christmas Eve, and it finds me the only one the 100 missionaries who work in this compound, coming in to work in my office. Strange feeling, to see it empty like this, and all of my coworkers and friends celebrating, but I'm here, working, or trying to. In fact today's job is to organize my storage area (a little cubicle I rent on the compound), and to put many things which I need to store there, things from my move which have been piled in the office. A task I've been putting off for several days now. Somehow it seems so daunting to face the accumulated clutter, which seems like debris from a shipwreck: old equipment no longer functioning (why I am keeping it?), obsolete things, old broken car parts, and the like. Broken, tired, worn out . . . like me? As I came in this morning, I noticed at the gate of the compound a Cameroonian guy named Patrick. He washes the cars for the missionaries, and gets a little money that way for his family and four kids. He doesn't do all that good of a job, but I often have him wash my car anyway, and have for years. You see, Patrick is blind, and he is as poor as they come, with a wife and four kids in a little rented room somewhere nearby. There aren't enough missionaries who have cars to give him a good living by washing cars, but that is all he has. Now I was surprised to see Patrick, because there are no missionaries coming in to work today, and there are no cars in the parking lot, other than my own now that I had arrived. And I asked him why he came. He said that it was Christmas Eve, and he needed to get some gifts for his children. "Every year they see the other kids in the neighborhood with little toys, and they've never gotten any, and so they've really been upset this year." Now the toys Patrick was talking about were the very inexpensive Chinese toys, the kind sold in dollar stores perhaps. And most kids in the city get one or two, with maybe a soft drink or candy. No much, but I'm sure it seems important if all the other kids have something, and you don't. So I offered to let Patrick wash my car, and when he was done, I paid him extra. But then, as I was cleaning out my storage, I found a whole box of little toys which had been sent me over a year ago. We gave out many of these toys last Christmas, but we kept some to use as prizes for the kids' club in the village. But they weren't all used up, here was a box of them, used toys of all kinds from America! With a lot of love, the people in a small country church had gathered all the toys they could and sent them to me for me to give out as I do children's evangelism. I had forgotten about this box, so I called Patrick over and gave him the box. It was a big box, and heavy, with gifts for perhaps two or three Christmases to come for his four kids. How surprised Patrick was, and he said: "This will be a Christmas for the kids to remember, and we'll save some for next year and beyond! The kids won't be ashamed this time when the see the other kids in the neighborhood!" So, I guess this is not such a bad Christmas after all. So many, like myself sometimes, think that we have nothing to give that could be appreciated. But, we forget that God is still at work, and in that pile of broken and obsolete things there may still be a box of toys for kids who have never had a toy on Christmas. Well, I've got to go, but Merry Christmas everyone! My thoughts and love go out to you today and on the new year! Emmanuel means "God is with us." and so we really have something to celebrate, whatever our situation. Merry Christmas, and God bless you, --Dan