Merry Christmas!

Hey everybody!

Merry Christmas!!! It's strange to be festive when it's still 85 degrees every day and it's been two months without any precipitation, but we're doing the best we can. No Christmas lights, trees or sleigh bells in Guinea, but in the morning you can usually see your breath and we've been rehearsing for our Christmas play. We certainly don't miss all the hustle and bustle, the cheesy tv specials and I can't speak for Carol, but I definitely don't miss Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas". We do miss all of you though! You can replace the food and the gifts, but the people are irreplaceable. We know we are in your thoughts and prayers though and
it's a daily comfort to us. Thank you!

We're also encouraged by the fact that God chose us to come here and serve Him. We really count it a privilege to be doing this work and as we remember the birth of Christ this week we are reminded how much God loved us, that He would send His own son to save us. We feel blessed to do this small service in response to His love.

Everything is well here. We're taking Christmas day off and in the morning we're having a service for all of the Sambouya and Bilingkoro people. They usually come for the gifts (usually just some candies), but it's the biggest service we have all year and we're praying that the villagers would truly come to know why we celebrate Christmas.

This Friday we will head down to Conakry for our two week retreat. We're excited that we'll be able to relax and not teach for a little bit. In Conakry we may even go to an island and go swimming in the ocean. We're not too excited about the eight hour drive, but we know that it'll be worth it once we get there. We won't have the same e-mail restrictions while we're there, so we hope to hear from some of you!

After we come back from Conakry in January, there will be a team coming from California. Mira Ahn, who taught here the past couple years, will also be visiting us! They'll be in Guinea for almost two weeks and during that time they'll be living in various villages for a few days and getting a taste of what M4 missions is like. Both Carol and Jeje got to spend time living with the villagers on their previous visits to Guinea, but this is my first trip here so I'm hoping to join one of the groups and have a true village experience for a few days.

When the team heads back to the States Pastor is also heading back for a month of speaking engagements. Mira has decided to stay until he returns and we're really excited to have the extra pair of hands. It will also be nice to have someone else who can speak Maninka and French pretty well.

Many of you have asked about our passport situation. We're going to get new passports since there hasn't been word of them being found. We'll have to go to the US Embassy in Conakry and Jeje's getting hers through the Korean Embassy in Senegal by mail. Please pray that the whole process would go through smoothly so that we can have passports again before we leave. :)

Everyone's been pretty healthy. Pastor and Caleb both had a short bout with malaria the past couple weeks, but early detection helped them to recover quickly. We had market day on Friday after school. We have been giving the kids and volunteers "money" for doing various things; getting water, doing laundry, delivering things, sweeping classrooms, etc. On Friday they got a chance to spend their money on things like used clothes and toys that were donated, new shoes and backpacks, games and puzzles, and hair accessories among other things. It was a mad house when the selling started and we were put in charge of pricing things and selling them. It would have been an easy job in America, but in a county that uses the barter system and lacks some of the manners that we're accustomed to it was almost too much. But we survived and it was really sweet to see some of the kids buying earrings for their mothers and shoes for their brothers and sisters back home.

We hope that you enjoyed the pictures that we were able to send. I know it gives a better idea of what things look like here. Right now we're able to receive pictures as well, so please feel free to send a couple pictures from home too. And if you're a Skype user we'll probably be online some during the next couple of weeks. Our screen name is shannonandcarol.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year again and God bless!

Love,
Shannon and Carol