Game On

I'm not even sure what time it was when we arrived at the Mission House but what I do know is we had three hours to unpack the crates that housed the Christmas Gifts we had brought....organize them & wrap them. I was so nervous...everyone dove in though & worked well together. Todd became the 'checker' and marked the name off the list when it was wrapped, Moriah loved to wrap & dove right in...and all the others helped to get them in the right places. There was just one catch....the crate with all the gift wrap, tissue, tape, gift bags etc. and a couple of gifts were missing!!! I panicked....YIKES how could this happen? We surmised that the crate containing those items was sitting in the house where we packed, in Hendersonville.

But no fear! 24 gift bags that had been donated arrived, along with two huge bag of bows & some additional totes. We had EXACTLY enough to wrap the gifts & if we couldn't wrap them they were covered in bows! Of course it worked out....although I was surprised....God wasn't....He had it all under control. (OH...and the last day of the trip in the middle of cleaning a HUGE bag of gift wrap tape etc. from previous trips was discovered in a crate under a table! Go figure!!) There had been 'extra' gifts donated and all the perfect gifts were there to replace the ones that were missing :o)

It didn't take nearly as long as we expected to wrap everything & before I knew it we each grabbed a handful of presents and like a line of ants we headed to the hogar! We placed them around the Christmas tree that they already had decorated & the girls were obviously excited (especially the little ones) I even caught a couple of the little girls peeking in the gift bags LOL

We all ate ate.....MMmmmm.....our first Honduran meal. Shredded chicken...and all the fixins. I joked with some of the team members that they had prepared Eastern Style BBQ just for us! One of the things that I have a hard time getting used to is the girls and the staff wait for us to eat. We have to all be seated and eating before they serve themselves.

After the tables were cleared a ring of chairs was set up and the girls all took a seat...a couple of "Santas" proceeded to hand out the gifts. Each girl was allowed to take out one gift & have their photo taken....and after that I expected the chaos to begin but it didn't. As I watched they were almost embarrassed. The older girls peeked in the bags to see what was there but didn't tear it all out. The little girls did take their gifts out and they proceeded to play with each others toys. It was so amazing to me though, even looking back...they were so appreciative of the littlest things.

The tias were so excited about their gifts. One of the tias even received a sawing machine!!! She was thrilled! It was such a wonderful evening!

Even the part about me falling spread eagle with a handful of gifts....I had to make a grand entrance you know!