Christmas
The challenge comes when people are getting ready to travel home to be with their families. They are all excited, you can see the sparkle in their eyes, they are cracking their heads for what presents to buy for family members and then they ask, " so what plans do you have for Christmas?", you smile and say " uh well, we haven't thought about that yet" in other words, we don't have any plans. This is a week before Christmas. All over sudden they wish they hadn't asked the question because they can't exactly say, come on over to my parents house.
When Uncle Enoka was here, he made contact with a distant relative who lives in Hershey Pennsylvania. They didn't know each other but Chris invited him to his house for a few days. I admire Uncle Enock for his courage, he just has a way of making things work and he is very friendly.
When he came back from that visit, he encouraged Sam and I to keep in touch with Chris, he said he was a nice guy, they had established the relationship and he had a nice family.
So Sam sent him an email and Chris invited us over for Christmas. We had originally planned to rent a car for the journey so that we could leave at our convenience but Chris offered to pay for our ride. We got a reply from Chris the night of the 23rd saying he had booked the tickets and made all the arrangements.
On the train ride I wondered how we would know who Chris was when we finally got to the station. We walked out and then I saw a man holding up a piece of paper with the name Ongwen boldly printed. I almost bust out laughing because it was really a strange situation. This guy doesn't know us from Adam but he has paid for our train ride to his home. By the way I didn't tell you how he mentioned in his email that after we got there we could decide when we want to come back. What??! this is such an open invitation, it was too good to be true. I thought tell him we will be there for a week, you know Christmas into the new year (obviously I'm kidding about that). We said we would stay two nights.
The time at Chris place was fantastic, his wife Sandra is Jamaican and they have two girls Mugisha and Mutoya who are 17 and 13 respectively.
Plenty of love to go around, as usual Mich got a triple portion. Food was exquisite and all home made (by the way that is a big blessing in this place where people want already made meals).We had oxtail, goat, salmon, mac & cheese, rice & beans, lots of veggies, it was food heaven and that is not mentioning the desert Jamaican Ram cake, easy orange-cranberry trifle, cookies and many other snacks you wouldn't click from me just explaining. You needed to be there and we had all this yummy food for two days running man!!!
Sandra had invited two other families, a Chinese couple and their 5 year old daughter and a black American couple with their 13 year old daughter, as you can see Mich was in business. We had a wonderful time.
On the 26th we took a trip to Hershey town, we visited the Hershey Chocolate World http://www.hersheys.com/chocolateworld/, Mich nearly got a darker skin tan from all the chocolate that he ate. We visited the Hershey Hotel, saw the Hershey schools and ended the day by visiting Penn State hospital where Chris is a researcher and Sandra is a nurse.
On 27th we said our good byes and Chris gave us a ride home.
About an hour after we arrived home and were settling in I got a call, some one called Chrispen was at the door to see us. He said he was Sam's cousin, we couldn't believe it, we knew that he was in the Philly area but since we never got responses to our emails we forgot all about him. Now he was at the door without any prior notice, what a pleasant surprise. He came with his two children, one just finished college and the other is just starting.
He has invited us over for New years day, how nice, one less occasion to worry about. God is just the bomb!!!!
Lets see how this one goes.
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Hey! Thanks for dropping by :-)