Melkam Gena or Merry Christmas in Ethiopia!

Christmas is not until January 7th here so we had our Branch Christmas Party

yesterday (Saturday Jan. 4th).   Here are a few pictures we took.

This was at home before we left for the party.
I was just EXCITED to find a STAR in Debre
Zeyit for our Christmas tree! 

Bob and I made and frosted over 130 sugar cookies, made about
75 Rice Krispie Christmas trees, two pans of Texas Sheet Cake
and banana bread for desserts for the branch. They have
nothing really SWEET like that here and they went NUTS over
them! The whole table of treats was GONE in about 2 minutes! 

We took the RS President to Sara Market to pick up the injera
she ordered for the dinner ~ 175 of them! They roll it up and cut
it in four pieces and serve it with stews, vegetables, etc. They
use the injera instead of silverware to eat all the food! 

I took this at our practice for the Primary Nativity "Drama" as
they call it.  The little twin shepherds are in Ethiopian traditional
dress.  Their family was just baptized a couple of weeks ago!
Elder Wold read the story from the scriptures in English and
Abraham read it in Amharic. 

This was taken during the performance with their costumes on.
The "star" got stage fright so one of the twin shepherds took
her place.  And the littlest angel fell asleep and missed the 
performance.  They did a great job! They even sang "Away
 in a Manger" after just learning it last week in Primary!

Our Debre Zeyit elders were the Three Wise Men and even
sang "We Three Kings"! They were great! They have been a 
threesome this transfer because the 4th has been in Uganda 
to renew his visa.  The next transfer is the day after Christmas.

Here is our NEW branch choir! We met for the FIRST time the
Sunday before and they learned three Christmas Carols from the
hymnbook in English.  (We were missing a few who came to choir
practice but chose not to perform in front of everyone....)  The 
eight YW in the branch sang "Angels We Have Heard on High"
and did an awesome job!