Making Christmas Joy
Our second Christmas in Vietnam was somehow more poignant than the first for me: we not only had the feeling of missing family for the second Christmas in a row, but also the realization that we wouldn't have our Vietnamese friends to celebrate with for the next Christmas. At least, that's how my mind played out the scenario. I find myself tipping between one and the other of those emotions, and it's a bit unsettling. Time is hurrying past now that we can count "months left" on one hand, and I'm not sure how I'm going to transition into life as "not a missionary". But that will be a topic for another day. We began our week on a quest to find outstanding Christmas decorations, which we heard were to be found in the up-scale part of Hanoi called Ocean Park 2, of which we have written before. We fully believed that a place as nice as that could very well have primo Christmas decorations, so our district all traveled by (free) bus to see. One probl...