Christmas 2020

 As everyone's year has been interrupted in dealing with Covid, ours has been too. Ireland's numbers were rising in the autumn and soon we found ourselves not being able to meet in person at church. Thankfully, just before Christmas, we were able to meet again for three Sundays, with distancing, masks on and no singing, but TOGETHER! We all praised God in different ways for that. 

The week before Christmas we were able to have people over to our house. We had dinner with dear friends we hadn't seen for months, had a man over from church after the Sunday service, and had the same man with his roommates over for Christmas dinner. We were so glad for this time to fellowship. 

On Christmas day, we spent the morning together as a family. During the afternoon we started getting ready for our guests and called our families. We made appetisers and dessert for our guests, but the main course was brought by our guests- curry! Our friends are from India and made two curries (chicken and lamb), fried bread, biriani (rice), and brought over many other treats from India. It was delicious! Elisha and Andrew cannot handle any spice, though and even though our guests did not make it as spicy as usual, Elisha and Andrew couldn't handle it. Also, our guests told us the best way to eat the curry is with your hands to get the flavors into the rice, so we did! It was a fun experience. Even when I served pumpkin pie and apple crisp for dessert our guests didn't need forks, but just ate with their hands. 

We were so thankful for the time together, but sadly everyone in Ireland enjoyed their time together even if they were sick and Covid cases were starting to soar even before Christmas. We went from having 300 cases a day to 7,000! We could not meet in person at church anymore after Christmas and could not have anyone over to our house in the new year. Our numbers are dropping, but it has been very slow. Some people predict we will be in lockdown like this until the end of March. God knows!