A week til Christmas

“8 days til Christmas and all through the house not a creature is stirring not even a mouse.” It’s funny because our house is strangely quiet and wonderfully clean. (cleanliness is relative =) More than half of our missionaries left for their vacation and travel time. Katie Kat flew to Lima to meet her sister. Thus we just have 7 girls, a clinic to run, and lots and lots of toys!

This morning we went to the orphanage. We go every Monday for our secret sister projects. We’ve probably been going about a month and a half now and the girls really enjoy it. Well today we decided to bring the girls Christmas sugar cookies and let them frost them. It was quite fun and messy!

Last night Becca and I baked the sugar cookies from scratch and made different colors of frosting.  Today when we came in, Tatyana who helps us with our sisterhood program wanted us to invite any available girls to come join us. So we did and worked with a few different girls today than we normally work with. The girls were so excited to frost the cookies. At first they didn’t know what to do. I started showing them and made a colored smiley face with my cookie. Then all of the girls started copying me with smiley faces on theirs. Some of the other sm’s quickly started decorating them with different designs so the girls learned they could make whatever design they wanted.

They iced beautiful hearts, trees, and of course crazy colored scribbles with loads of sprinkles on all of the cookies! When everyone was done we did a count down from ten and then all devoured them quickly. We got to work with 2 younger girls today who were around 10 years old and they were just so excited and sweet. We sang “We wish you a Merry Christmas” with them about 4 times since it was the only Christmas song they knew. It was a good time.

After the orphanage, we piled in to visit Juan Luis, the paralyzed young man who was in an accident. His wounds, which originated as bed sores, are doing significantly better, thanks to our daily visits to clean and repad his sores. It’s still just so sad to see him lying on the bed so helpless and not be able to do more. We wish it would be possible to find him a wheelchair so he could move around- hopefully when the bed sores heal.

We went to town today to try and finish off our huge orphanage Christmas shopping list! We did pretty well! We’ve bought so many presents for these sweet kids: journals, colored pens, big cars, volleyballs, soccer balls, action figures, and some sweet candies. Two nights ago all of the missionaries had a little card making/ decorating party and wrote out 22 thank you note cards for many of the donors to the project. Tonight we are going to do a big inventory of everything we have and start assigning different presents to different kids and bagging them that way we know if we have any last minute needs.

It’s just so strange in our house with only us girls. Yesterday when John John, Seth, Arri, Allie, Lisa, and Jeremy left it was sad because John John and Jeremy will never come back here. They’re returning to the States after they travel and going back to Southern.

We’re gonna miss those boys even though they drive us crazy. For example, this past week we’ve gotten boxers, a huge bottle of eaten pistachio nuts, and a cat thrown over the top of our roof into our room. Then the night before the left, the boys captured Katie Kat and I in their room traumatizing us trying to “invicorate” our belly buttons. It was very weird but Katie and I just ran away and kept screaming until Caitlin came in there and saved us from those mean boys =p We sang the traditional “Na na na na hey hey hey goodbye” song when they left chasing them out and we also made the boys cake pops and woke them up with singing “He’s a jolly good fellow” that morning. Ya we’re gonna miss those boys. It’s hard because it’s our SM family literally being torn apart- and we know it will never be the same.

It’s so quiet but we’re in good Christmas spirits here! I’ve gotten two packages this week from Aunt Julie and my Grandma Price as well as one from my mom last week! So now I have Christmas goodies and feel so loved. =) Our room has Christmas lights and we have our Christmas music. Even though we all miss our families back home we’re all doing pretty well partying it up.  This Thursday Bernice and I have a party with our school. (We’re doing a duet “Mary Did you know” for the party so say a prayer ;)We have a Christmas party with our “ice cream family” at La Muyana no joke- the ice cream parlor ladies love us- this Saturday night. Then on Sunday we’re having a party for the community Christmas kids. Lots and lots of parties, but hey tis the season to be jolly! Merry Christmas from Peru!