CHRISTMAS VIGNETTES: First Christmas on the Mission Field - Part II

There I was finishing up my first year on the mission field in Latvia, and it was Christmastime. If you read Part I, you learned that Christmas hadn’t really caught on yet in newly independent Latvia in 1994, and that they barely had street lights, much less Christmas lights. But that was about to change, at least at my house.

I lived in a big, old house in the Baltic seaside resort town of Jurmala, Latvia, which my roommates and I affectionately called the Gray Box, because that’s exactly what it looked like. My roommates there included Mary, a fellow American missionary; Joy, a Filipina missionary; and Asya, a Russian student who attended our church.

Neither Joy and nor I had ever been away from home and family for Christmas, and neither of us was thrilled about that. Mary was accustomed to being away from home and Asya had never celebrated Christmas before and didn’t know what she was missing. But Joy and I both loved traditions and magic of the Christmas season as it is celebrated in both the U.S. and the Philippines and were longing for home and the familiar Christmas joys. Joy was drowning in self-pity and at first spent a good deal of time sighing, moping and whining. I, on the other hand, had anticipated this scenario and had determined in advance that we would make the proverbial lemonade out of our lemons. This Christmas abroad would be what we made of it. It would be different from what we were used to, but it could be wonderful. And here was an opportunity to introduce our newly Christian friends to all the joys of celebrating the birth of our Savior. There was every reason for joy. We just needed a plan and a little resourcefulness. Joy and I decided to buck up and began planning a traditional Christmas dinner, or as traditional as available materials and our lack of a real kitchen would allow. We would invite all the single missionaries and whomever else we could get to come from among our local friends.

I had brought from home a couple of strings of lights and a transformer along with a few favorite Christmas ornaments. We also found some Christmas decorations for sale at a local children’s clothing store (go figure) and bought those. I found a spindly, Charlie Brown-type tree at a farmer’s market a week before Christmas for about two dollars and we set it up in the “dining room”, which was empty except for our rickety dining table and 6 wooden chairs. But this room did have a big picture window where we placed the tree, with its colored lights, for all to see. We hoped that it would bring unexpected cheer to the dark and dreary winter days of passersby, and maybe stir some distant memory of a celebration of the Christ Child.

We planned our Christmas dinner for Christmas Eve night. A young Lithuanian family and their Bassett Hound who had been driving up from Vilnius and staying with us several weekends a month happened to be coming to town, so we happily added them to our guest list. That night, we ended up with two Americans, three Filipinos, one Russian, four Lithuanians, and one Russian Jew who had recently believed in Jesus as Messiah crowded around our table. Some spoke English, some didn’t. Thank God, one was a translator.

That night, the Lithuanians presented me with a fabulously beautiful and unique hand-knit sweater, which easily must have cost them a month's salary. The gift was to thank me for hosting all of them in our home so many times and for the many very late nights spent with them around the table talking about God, the Bible and life's issues. It was quite overwhelming and really added to the specialness of the evening. We also made a cassette recording of our dinner conversation. I had lost track of that cassette until I unpacked the personal belongings that I only recently had shipped back from Latvia.

Joy and I had done everything possible to bring the Christmas spirit into the house through lights, decorations and Christmas music, but more importantly through prayer and the pure and unadulterated joy of the Lord. We wanted Christmas magic for our guests who had never known the pleasure of celebrating it. They came looking for a new cultural experience. In the end, however, we all had a wonderful spiritual experience as God broke down every conceivable barrier between us, national, cultural or linguistic. Our evening together was everything Joy and I dreamed it would be with rich fellowship, God’s presence among us, laughter, good food, high spirits, warmth, love and joy—everything that Christmas is made of, even snow. We all basked in the afterglow of it for a long time.

Time prevents me from sharing more detail about our first Christmas in Latvia. However, even though those present at our table that night now live on three different continents, every one of us treasures the memory of that night. The Russians and Lithuanians went on to establish their own Christmas traditions. Joy and I learned that no sacrifice we are called to make in the service of the Lord ever goes uncompensated. Of course, we missed our families and homes, but we lacked nothing in the true spirit of Christmas. It really was a very merry Christmas.