The holidays are always a time to celebrate together with your family and loved ones, so of course it is one of the hardest times in a YAGM Year. With my work at the church, the General Secretary, Pastor Prince, asked me a couple months ago if I would like to organize (Which also I later found out meant LEAD) our Christmas Eve service as he knew that Christmas Eve was more of a big deal to us Americans than to Rwandese. I love organizing and planning, so that was a no-brainer. The service became a unity service. Half in Kinyarwanda and half in English. We also have an amazing family from Madagascar who I invited to sing so they could celebrate using their language and traditions. Speaking of singing! I taught my choir to sing O Come All Ye Faithful which was exciting and I taught the children AND my choir the first verse of Silent Night in English and the other verses in Kinyarwada! Christmas trees are seldom seen here so, I made MANY paper ornaments for the community (mostly the children) to decorate and we all decorated the tree together. Pastor Prince also wanted as many of the other YAGM there to celebrate with us, which the majority did!
We may not have been home for the holidays, but I hope I brought just a little bit of home to everyone who attended the service.
Below I have the recording of the service (sorry the audio is a little funky), and the bulletin if you'd like to follow along a little better.
We may not have been home for the holidays, but I hope I brought just a little bit of home to everyone who attended the service.
Below I have the recording of the service (sorry the audio is a little funky), and the bulletin if you'd like to follow along a little better.