Christmas Time and Other Stories

Christmas has come, and we are finally done with our first semester! It has been a challenging and amazing semester, and we can’t believe that four months have already come and gone. It feels like it has been so long and yet so short at the same time, and I can’t believe that four months ago we got on a plane to come here. It seems that we have been running for the entire semester, and only now are we slowing down to sink in to living here a bit.

Right before the end of the semester, Thanksgiving came. Now, Thanksgiving as celebrated on the 4th Thursday of November is, of course, an American holiday. But, since many students from JUC are American, we still were able to celebrate it! Off-campus students were able to participate, as long as we brought a dessert. To spice things up a bit, Justin and I made and brought Chocolate-Chipotle Shortbread Cookies (shortbread was one of the few dessert baked items I could think of that required minimal ingredients and no eggs, which are incredibly expensive here, and could fit in our adult version of an easy-bake oven). Now, this cookie might sound yucky to you, but if you have never tried chocolate with chili, you are definitely missing out! Even the first hot cocoa invented was made in South America by the Aztecs, and it had chili powder in it! So, don’t knock it until you try it…and if you would like to try it, email me and I’ll send you the recipe!

Some friends of ours made the dinner for the entire school, and we had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, complete with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce! (In wondering where they got all of these American ingredients, our curiosity was quelled when we went to one of the more American grocery stores here to get cocoa powder, only to find it stocked more than usual with American ingredients…and more English-speaking shoppers than we had heard in months! I guess all of the American ex-pats come out of the woodwork during the American holidays :0).

The week after Thanksgiving was our finals, and we had a countdown of about 4 tests and 2 papers. Our most stressful test was the very last one, on Friday. Our archaeology class consisted of lectures and one final exam at the end, similar to a more European method of teaching. All research and all studying was the responsibility of the student, and needless to say, a very, very significant portion of your grade is based on that one exam. Compounded with this, as some of you know, our emphasis here is in archaeology, and we have already begun to work on our thesis topics with the professor of this class, Dr. Gabriel Barkay. So, we also felt a little pressure to do well on this exam because, well, we are his only thesis students. No pressure…. At 11am on Friday morning, we emerged from the 2-hour essay exam with throbbing fingers and much, much lighter hearts. We’ll get our graded tests back in about 4 or 5 months, but in the mean time, I think we did ok.

That Friday night, we kicked off the celebrations of Christmas. Since it was the last night all of the Fall 2009 JUC students would be together (those in the Egypt class would be leaving the next morning at 5:30 to head to Egypt, and all others were going home), around 7pm, everyone headed through the Old City, to St. Anne’s Church for Christmas carols. St. Anne’s cathedral is a Crusader church with the most amazing acoustics you will ever hear in your life (we talked about this church in one of our first blog entries). I had been looking forward to this all semester! It was fun and strange to walk through the Old City at night, with most of the shops closed and no Christmas decorations, with the crisp cold of the night still reminiscent of Christmas time, to go to a 1,000 year old church to sing carols about an event that happened down the road from us 1,000 years before that. It was a fun experience, and made Justin and I look forward to Christmas Eve services in just a few short weeks.

Well, with the end of our schoolwork, we could now focus on decorating! You see, Christmas here is not like Christmas in the United States. Here, those who celebrate Christmas do so in a much more solemn fashion, and you will not typically find decorations and Christmas carols in any store (save the very, very few who cater to expats). Of course, in the States we tend to ascribe these features (Christmas products and carols in every store, beginning as early as September) to American commercialism and not to the true spirit of Christmas, but it is interesting to be away from it and to realize that this aspect of American culture really helps to set the mood that we, as Americans, are used to when celebrating Christmas. I don’t know if I can sufficiently describe it, but needless to say, we miss it.

So, we are bringing Christmas to us! And…we have to do it very creatively, and very cheaply, since we have, well, nothing. So, we have slowly collected a few items, and over the past week or so we have diligently worked at making our home look Christmassy. It is absolutely amazing what you can do with items such as pine cones and toilet paper roles when you have a little bit of glitter and colorful pipe cleaners! We brought a tiny fake tree from home, and we have that up and decorated. We even have the hope of getting a REAL Christmas tree! We have never had a real Christmas tree, since they are really, really expensive in the United States! There is actually one Christmas tree farm in Israel, just south of Jerusalem and maybe an hour or so away, who give away Christmas trees to non-profits like JUC every year! We just received an update, and it looks like we might (yes, everything here is expressed as “might” :0) get our Christmas tree on Monday!!! It will be delivered to the school, and we get to tote it home. Yay!!! The only thing we are missing in our decorations is lights (I brought a strand from home and then realized that it wasn’t rigged for 220 voltage), and since a very small strand of lights here (50 lights or so) will cost us about $15, we are willing to forego them. I was, however, thrilled last Friday night when, as we were walking home at dusk, we discovered that they had hung lights along one of the main roads we cross! They were blue and gold and marked the Shabbat of the lighting of the first candle of Hanukah, but somehow, it made it feel a little more like Christmas too.

So, we are getting all prepared for Christmas! (For those who are still looking for pictures of our new apartment, we haven’t forgotten! We are planning to get some good pics of our house after it is all decorated :0) For Christmas Eve, we plan to go to Christ Church, in the Old City, for caroling (in English, we hope :0) and then to the Scottish Presbyterian Church near us for a Christmas Eve “watch-service.” We have never attended a midnight Christmas service, and we are very excited to go! We had considered going to Bethlehem, but we have heard that it is very busy down there on Christmas Eve. Not to mention, we would have to arrange and pay for bus fare in the evening, and ultimately, it sounds a little crazier than what we want to do.

I had wondered what it would be like to celebrate Christmas here, and I think it is turning out to be a little different from what I had imagined. On the one hand, as mentioned above, it doesn’t have the same eye-catching reminders that we have in the States. But, it is still a special time. For one, it is incredible to listen to familiar Christmas music, hear the songs that we know and love and to consider the realities that surround us. The "little town of Bethlehem" is only a few miles south of our apartment as are the surrounding Judean fields in which the gospel writers note that shepherds saw divine messengers heralding the birth of the one called "God with us," in Hebrew ˁImmanu-El. Jesus was probably born in a culture very much like the one that is in Bethlehem today. You see, the little town of modern Bethlehem is a Palestinian city and the Palestinians, up until a few years ago had resisted the kind of westernization that now characterizes the majority of Israel and has for the last hundred years. This means that up until 100 years ago or so, life for Palestinians (which includes both Jews and Arabs) was very much like it has been since the first century in terms of how people live and make money.

It is so strange to hear our Christmas carols we brought with us, and to be struck every time we hear “Bethlehem” with the knowledge that we can now walk to it. We’ve been to the city, we’ve seen the people who are there, and we picture it when we hear its name. It is about 3 miles down the road from us, and the Church of the Nativity is another mile or so past that. Not far to drive at all, and a little bit of a walk. The Son of God was born just down the road from us, in a culture that is very similar to the one we currently live in. He wasn’t American…He was Middle-Eastern. He didn’t celebrate Christmas… He wasn’t familiar with any of the things we miss from home. His home was here, speaking a language we can’t understand, acting according to the principles of a culture we are just beginning to know. It is interesting to contemplate, and it brings the story of Christmas into a much more realistic light for us. The nativity scene has jumped off of the western table in our minds and now walks around in front of us with flesh and blood. Was it exactly as we see it today? No, of course not. But, living here definitely brings it to life. I no longer picture the ceramic people and animals that my mom puts on her coffee table every December, sprinkled with snow and with stars and angels above it. Those are really good reminders, but they aren’t what I picture any more. I picture now real people in traditional dress with middle eastern smells (all of which are not so pleasant) living in small houses made of mud and stone. It is a very good transition, I think, and makes us appreciate the wonder of Christmas all the more.

The season is also different for us for, outside our home, it doesn’t really feel much like Christmas. You have this almost constant feeling that many around you don’t celebrate it. So, for us to keep the spirit of Christmas, we must keep it within us. It seems so Christmassy to say that, but I think we are learning to live it this year. We really feel it, and we work hard to maintain it. The season of Christmas shouldn’t just bestow happy feelings on people because of everything around them, but people should work to make Christmas feel like Christmas because of what they do for each other and the conscious decisions they make to keep Christmas as a joyous, thankful, giving time of year. That is what brings peace to homes and glad tidings to families during these holidays. It isn’t the things that are brought to us (by people or by our surroundings) that make Christmas special; it is what we contribute to the holidays that creates the “spirit of Christmas” and the celebratory nature of the birth of Christ and the time with friends and family.

So, there is much for us to think about and do during this restful season of Christmas! We are planning to spend our break doing some research for our thesis papers, which are not due until the end of our time here, but will require a good deal of work and so the earlier that we can get started on them the better. We have picked out our topics, met with our advisor, and have checked out a bunch of books, which we hope to read over the break - we'll see what happens. We still have another year and a half here, but we have been advised to start our theses now, to try to get them done in the time frame we have allotted. So, we have plans for diligent study over the break!

In January, we are also scheduled to help JUC in the kitchen with their short-term January group that will be coming the beginning of the month. Justin and I are excited for the opportunity to earn a little more money, to help with our spring semester costs, and to get to spend a little more time at the school. JUC currently hires volunteer cooks for the semester, and the new cooks will be arriving and training alongside us! (as a side note, if anyone is interested in volunteering for a semester in Israel to cook for JUC, with room and board paid for and opportunities to see the country, please contact the Director, Paul Wright, at paulwright@juc.edu).

Praise Reports!
1. Done with Semester #1 with hopefully successful scores!
2. We have finally finished paying all of the bills due to our old landlord, so we are officially done with our old apartment! (bills here come sporadically and are paid, oh, every 3-4 months or so… it has been really frustrating to not have these paid and to not even know how much we owe! It’s nice to have this off of our plate :0)
3. Extra work over the break, and Justin is definitely going to teach his online class through LIFE Pacific College again in the Spring!
4. We received scholarships to help cover about 1/3 of the total cost of our spring semester!
5. I have finally figured out how to dry laundry! (this one might seem silly, but it is a really big deal! Living in a solid cement box with little ventilation and no dryer, it was taking over 48 hours to get our laundry dry…which means mildew… With a double spin at the end of the laundry cycle, a little space heater, a line stretched across our house, and a towel to capture the heat under the drying lines…and a fan to push all of the moist air out of here, I have succeeded in getting laundry dry in about 12 hours!)

To update everyone on our prayer requests over the next couple of months:

1. Spring Semester Costs. Our school bill for the Spring semester will be due the beginning of February, and we are currently about $5,000 short. If you feel led to give, please let us know, and we can give you directions on where to send the funds. We appreciate each and every one of you for your prayers, support, and active participation in the journey with us. Each step is difficult and rewarding, and we have peace that we are not walking this alone.
2. Alternate Sources of Funding. We have recently discovered a few different possible sources for funding some of this experience. Please be praying that the funding works out for us, as it would help relieve the stress of living here on a depleting account.
3. Thesis Topics. As much as we love the experience of living here, we know it costs money that, well, we simply can’t make here. So, we are trying to reduce our time here as much as possible by adding more work now. Please pray that we can successfully work through thesis topics and that our advisor works with us in a timely manner, so that we can get done and come home on time!
4. The Holidays. We definitely miss being away from our families and what is familiar during this time of year. We appreciate your prayers during this holiday season, for us and for our families.

Thank you everyone for your prayers and support of our first set of adventures in Israel. We are on the threshold of a new semester with another full load of classes and lots of things to learn. We are excited to see what is next and what God has in store for us. We humbly ask that you, our friends and family, would continue to support us with prayer and where possible with finances. Thank you for your generosity and your care for us that you have shown over the course of our first semester.

God bless each of you through this wonderful time of the year! Savor the moments of Christmas, and enjoy the twinkling lights and familiar holiday baked smells for us. We hope that our entries have inspired you and have maybe been food for thought as well.

Much Love,

Justin and Mandy Kelley