December 22 was a day I was dreading. We had invited the whole refugee community that we're in contact with, to come to a Christmas party at the Lighthouse. I was totally overwhelmed at the idea of pulling off this party with very little help. (basically my husband and one young apprentice guy) I was tired and frankly and didn't have a very good attitude about things. We had an idea of the number that would come because we sold tickets for 2 Euro per adult and 5 Euro per family to attend the party. This at least helped give us an idea of the number to expect and how many gifts to buy for the children. I spent several hours going from store to store, looking for the perfect gift for each child by name. Darrell wrapped them and wrote their names on the gifts. I baked 100 sugar cookies and Robbie, our apprentice, decorated them all. We spent hours preparing the food, although we had ordered the main dish to be delivered. There was still a ton of preparation on our part. As the magic hour approached for the party to begin, I wondered what on earth would transpire. We had a German pastor coming to tell the Christmas story in German. The young people and children would all understand it well. Others would hopefully at least get the gist of it. We had another woman to read the Christmas story in Arabic. There would be dinner served and games, gifts, cakes and lots of chaos for sure!!
By the time everyone arrived, we ended up with 70 people. There were 8 baby buggies lined up down the hall. The children were all dressed up and so excited for the gifts. Even Santa Claus made an appearance and delighted everyone. I felt like everything was so chaotic with drinks spilling and food falling and babies crying but everyone else was having a blast. We got rave reviews on the evening and people seemed to really enjoy themselves. I think they were impressed that every child got a different gift, specially bought for him/her. The very last person to leave was a woman that's at the top of our "hit list". She's a Syrian dentist's wife who lives right next door to the lighthouse. She told me that the best part of the evening was the pastor's "speech". She speaks perfect German so she understood every word. There are some significant cracks of light peering through the darkness here and we feel we're on the verge of some breakthroughs. We're so anxious for our new partner George to arrive and take the reins. It's a fun and crazy ride!
and then gathering for a discussion on hospitality in the German culture vs the Arab culture. We have a German friend who joins us every week from one of the local churches and helps the ladies learn the language and culture. We also talked about greeting people and I was surprised to find out that Germans think Arab women are very rude because they refuse to shake hands with men or look them in the eye. This is very important in the German culture but for a Mus woman, it is a shameful thing (if she's veiled) to shake a man's hand other than her family members. We came up with some ways that women could greet men without touching them and make them know that they are happy to see them. There are probably no two cultures as diversely opposed as the Syrian Mus culture and the German culture. No wonder there is so much distrust and misunderstanding between them. I think today was a great start to the women understanding much better how they need to conduct themselves in this culture. We challenged them to think about things that they are willing to give up in order to be accepted more fully into the German culture. Things that they think are "religious" are often just practices/habits that have been passed on through the generations and have no religious value at all. At least we got them to THINK! I truly adore these women and long for them to know the love of Jesus. Their lives are totally void of love. They are bound up in fear and self-hatred. They hate their lives, they hate life here, many hate their husbands. It's really sad. Jesus is the only possible solution. 
