Our Christmas
Letter
Subtitle - ‘Its
all about me’ (Ken probably thinks its
always all about me!)
Christmas is
really all about Him, Jesus. Some
slogans say, “Put Christ back into Christmas”.
Jesus is often lost amongst all the shopping, planning, parties, food,
drink and frantic rush that seems to happen even if you are the most well
prepared person – those last few days always bring a slight panic that all is
not ‘ready’ and more must be done!! What is it all about? Why get into this frenzy? Why do we allow
ourselves to be drawn into the commercialization of Christmas?
This year we haven't got a Christmas tree, so we decorated our door!
We wanted to share
a few key moments of this last year – and it has been perhaps a very key year
for me (Heather) particularly – so perhaps the subtitle is ok, (this once!).
2015 began with us
making a firm decision to apply to Asha to work as volunteers, teaching English
to the slum children and students. Our visa would allow us to stay in India for
6 months. Asha agreed to have us and
further plans began.
I celebrated a
‘significant’ birthday in June with a very lovely surprise party in Morden Park.
I now was able to
begin my official retirement and so resigned from my two part-time teaching
jobs in July.
July brought all
family members together from Switzerland, France, Ireland, Italy, to celebrate
Simon and Katie’s wedding. It was a
beautiful day. Strawberry Hill College
was a stunning setting and everyone had a wonderful and memorable time.
Ken continued to
have students from abroad to teach and home/stay until July and then we set our
sights on preparing the house to be ‘let’, gather all we needed for our
teaching time here in Delhi, and try to think of everything that needed doing
before we flew here in September.
Now we are here,
perhaps you have been following our work and play in our weekly blogs – all Delhi
news is there!
All the family are
well. Molly is in Manchester, but not
for long as she and Elliot are flying to Goa on 27th and meeting us
there for a few days holiday together.
Simon and Katie
have just moved into their first house in Twickenham.
Sophie is living
in our home in Morden with two lovely tenants – they are all getting on well.
Matt and Stacey
are in Cambridge and possibly planning to come out to Delhi in the New Year and
see a bit of our life here.
Living in Delhi
and walking into the Ekta Vihar slum everyday is certainly a ‘wake up call’ to
us, to value all we have, to look at what is really important, to see how these
intensely close communities share and live by incredible values and to take very
seriously how we can share our gifts, talents, joy and love with all whom we
meet.
Putting Christ
back into Christmas, finding a simple expression of the love, peace, joy, and
freedom He came to bring and seeing the children acting out their nativity
plays and singing with every breath they have with smiles and gratitude, was
very humbling today but certainly the things we will be pondering on this
Christmas day.
Asha promotes 10
values in their teaching with the women and children. They are written on the candy canes on our
Christmas card. We hope you will pick
one to think about this Christmas.
(Generosity, Compassion, Gratitude, Simplicity, Optimism, Empowerment, Nonviolence, Justice, Dignity, Joy)
Merry Christmas
and a very Happy New Year
Heather and Ken xx
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