Christmas At Our House - Traditions (Part 3)

I pray you all enjoyed a blessed Christmas and a wonderful New Year's celebration with family and friends. First of all I would like to ask your forgiveness for taking so long to post on here! My reasons are legitimate since we spent the entire two weeks before Christmas working long days in order to move our family into our new home before the very cold weather arrived. I have much more to say about all that so stay tuned! 

On to another family tradition we have started here on the mission field - preparing goodies to give out to our neighbors and church families.  Every year during the Christmas/New Year holiday time we have baked cookies for our neighbors, post office workers, pharmacist, and families of Sunday school children.

Beka shelling nuts to use in baking. (2006)

Ryan helping roll the cookies in  powdered sugar. (2006)

We have also enjoyed preparing family baskets with tea, candy, cookies, fruit, and surprises for the children.

Me preparing baskets (2007). Please forgive the head cut off by my very young photographer.

Most of this year's cookie plates.

This year I thoroughly enjoyed baking in my new house with much more kitchen space!

We really enjoy delivering these goodies to everyone. It is very rare that we can get away from the door without a gift as most Russians believe they must give something in return. We do our best to get in and out without anything extra! We've come home with everything from eggs to frozen fish as New Year's presents! They are all so surprised to hear that we just want to be nice and hospitable, not expecting anything in return. Sometimes we are invited in for tea and a chat which provides a nice opportunity for us to share Christ with them and for them to ask questions. During a stop on this year's cookie delivery, I visited one of my neighbors who had been diagnosed with lung cancer this past summer. She began to share her heart with me about how she doesn't go out anymore or invite anyone into her home so that they do not see her in the condition she is in now that she has gone through five rounds of chemotherapy. She invited me to come back to talk with her. Now that opportunity is worth way more than a plate of cookies!