Christmas Memories

How silently, how silently he wondrous gift is giv'n!
So God imparts to human hearts, the blessings of His heaven.

No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin,

Where meek souls will receive Him, still the dear Lord enters in.

Christmas has always had a special place in my heart. It has been a time of surprises, of family, and most of all of the wonder of Jesus becoming a man. What an incredible thing it was when God sent Jesus as a small baby to a stable in Bethlehem! Micah prophecied years earlier that the Messiah would be born there. So the stage was set.

I suppose my first memories of Christmas were in Spain. I have memories of visiting places that had rooms and rooms of the different events around Jesus' birth. Every year we never tired of seeing the representation of of all the circumstance that sorrounded the birth of Jesus.

Some time when I was small Daddy sat us down and told us that the only time that he knew his mother lied to him was about Santa Claus and he never wanted us think that he would lie to us.We would say that Santa Claus was bringing presents, but we would always know that in reality it was just that .. a game. Play it we did, with all our strength. ( Years later with our children we decided that Santa Claus was not an important part of the way we wanted to celebrate Jesus' birth so we talked about the wonderful gift that God had given us by giving us His son and that is why we give gifts.)

In church it was a time for all children to learn poems and scriptures by heart to recite on "Noche Buena" of Christmas Eve. I'm sure that we were nervous as we stood there reciting our poetry. Now as an adult I realize that we could not really fail, because no matter how it came out the parents were proud of those their children as they recited the scriptures or the poetry that
had been assigned to them. (I am the second girl from the left.)

Later on there was part of a poem that Cristina Rosetti wrote that
stuck with me:
What can I give Him,Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb,

If I were a wise manI would do my part,

Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.

I think what remains in my heart so many years later of those years as a child in my home is the love of my Daddy and my Mother for us as well as the love of Jesus who came down to earth for us so many years ago. I remember the fun of trying to make or find something that we knew would thrill the heart of the one who would be receiving that gift. We knew that God had given his best, so we wanted to do the same. It wasn't a matter of the monitary cost of the gift, it was what it cost me personally to offer that present-my imagination, my thought. I don't remember being disappointed. I just remember the excitement that was in the air.

In Spain I remember the cold days when a good hot chocolate accompanied by churros calientes was a treat. I remember the "villancicos" (Spanish Christmas carols) we learned and sang as well as the American Christmas Carols. When I was in school Christmas also meant Christmas presentations. I was remembering one Christmas when we put on "Sound of Music". We added our Christmas repertoire in the second part. Since I was in an AirForce High School in Madrid, Spain which was on the SAC AirForce Base we had the privilidge of having the Air Force Band accompany us. The excitement of the performances became a part of my Christmas Memories.

Even now as I hear Christmas Carols being performed instrumentally it brings back the excitement of singing with the Air Force Band in the background. What delightful memories filter back to me as I sit and listen to the instrumental renditions of those songs. In this picture only my bangs are visible behind the nun on the right. I was part of the nuns singing Latin songs in "Sound of Music", a small part but exciting to me nevertheless!

Of course at that time Spain the big emphasis for the children was the Three Kings Day on January 7th. Their traditions were built around the fact that because the Three Kings gave gifts to Jesus that day if children were good they too would receive gifts.

So all the little children would put out their shoes to receive gifts. One wonders how that would transalate in these days when kids want X boxes and such-they would have to have mighty big shoes for that!

When I came to Mississippi for college, I began a whole new set of memories around Christmas. Both of my grand parents were alive-the Whittens in Weir, and the Mitchells in Louisville which was only 30 miles apart in the north central part of Mississippi. I remember walking the woods of the farm in Louisville in the cold of winter, crunching through the leaves left from Fall. My Uncle H.C. who lived in Starkville would appear with Aunt Peggy and the kids on the Saturdays to help feed the animals and some other chores. We would usually end up at his older brother's house, my uncle Bruce, for supper. At my other grandparent's house Daddy's two brothers with their kids would come down a few days around Christmas. We would sit around with big cans of pop corn and play Canasta, or Rook and tell stories days gone by. I learned a lot about my great grandfather who was a preacher as I heard them reminisce. We ate a lot of good food, among others my Mamaw's pecan pie which still makes my mouth water thinking about it.


So now looking back even thought those were only about 6 years.. those times with the family came to be precious in my recollections and a very important part of my Christmas memories.


When Steve and I got married we began a whole other set of memories. The first Chrismases we spent in part with Steve's family. One Christmas I probably didn´t even know I was pregnant, but the next Christmas Cristina had arrived and was between 2 and 3 months old. We drove from Pensacola to Mississippi to celebrate Christmas with the family and then help celebrate my sister Margaret's wedding days late. We also celebrated my Whitten Grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary.



We didn't know it then but this would probably be the last time we celebrated Christmas all together as a family with the Whitten since after we left for Costa Rica for Steve to study Spanish and then to Honduras where we were to be for eight and almost 9 years Papaw Whitten would die. So that Christmas was unique for the four generations that celebrated together those 22 years ago. We have since seen my parents reach their 61 years together. But in this picture we were honoring Willie and Velma Whitten, the two wearing glasses for their 60 years together.


So began another phase in my life, as a young mother who by the next Christmas was expecting who now is my 30 year old son Philip. Central American Christmases are mind blowing if you have never experienced them. The biggest change for us was the noise on Christmas Eve. Of all the Latin American countries we have lived in (Honduras, Ecuador and now Guatemala) looking back on our Christmas Eve experiences Honduras would win hands down because of the noise that went on all night. In the following picture you can see the fireworks waiting to be sold.

Our first Christmas Steve said as he tried to sleep though it, "It made me think of Vietnam!" I was 5 months pregnant at the time and I too felt under fire. We learned quickly that the way to defeat that feeling was to visit other people and eat the sweet torrejas which was a sort of cake baked in brown sugar and just fellowship till the noise had died down. The former concept that we had of "Silent Night" or "not a creature was stirring" became displaced by the excitement of the fireworks going till at least 3 in the morning. The challenge when the kids were little was to keep them awake so that they wouldn't be awaking you early for Christmas presents in the morning. Also when we watched the fireworks they were not nearly so scary as when you listened to them in your bed and tried to sleep.

As our kids got older Philip began saving for some fireworks and he would treat us to our own personal firework show. The memories of sitting back and watching Philip and sometimes Tim setting up the fireworks are there as well in my Christmas memories. When the children became old enough to really appreciate the meaning of Christmas I realized that I was going to have to make some memories-that I couldn't sit and yearn for the days when I was little or with my relatives in Mississippi, I had to make memories for my children.

Our first Christmases it was almost impossible to find a Christmas tree like we were used to. The artificial trees were a bit beyond our budget so we decided to do what the Honduras did. You bought a dry regular tree and used detergent soap to make it look like snow all over the tree. Then we decorated it. We used to call it our painted stick but it worked and we were happy. Here Cristina was about three and Philip was a year and a half.

I remember one year when I was particularly homesick for all the fun and the excitement that I had experienced with my family as a child. I sort of sat up and said I need to make some memorable memories for these 4 children that God has given me. Tim was 7 months old, and Anita was 3, Philip was 6 and Cristina was 7 1/2. I remember getting some felt and making some green stockings with decorations on them. I also made an advent calendar with different scriptures of the prophecies that were fulfilled with Jesus's birth and his life. Nana Lassiter, their grandmother, had brought us a tree so we were able to put our "painted stick" away and here we are at that time in our lives.



When they were little I felt like it was so much work every year, but I as driven by the joy that I saw in their faces and knowing somehow that these were indeed memories that I was making every year. While I was doing that, thinking about Christmas dinner and all Steve recorded a video that year that has become traditional for us to watch of how we were then. One year, after I started working fulltime at Alliance Academy in Quito, I figured they probably wouldn't miss it. Cristina asked why it wasn't up and she made us a new set of scriptures.. mine were getting a bit shabby by that time. We kept that set for 17 more years till I somehow misplaced them last year so here you have the new set that made this year for Steve and for me. It still amazes to see how many prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus!

We got to doing our manger scene more seriously when we moved to our second house in Quito, Ecuador. Steve got a board and drilled hole in it after he had painted it brown. He bought some typical little houses at the market and put christmas lights through each hole and there we placed a house. We had our figures that we had bought years before for the manger scene. It was 18 years ago that we added that tradition to our family. We would buy the different colored dirts and grasses and make our manger scene.

So every year I go looking for the different colors of sawdust to put in the manger scene. Since our figures are small I am always on the lookout for small animals or figures that would fit in to our "nacimiento". I remember one year I found a group of little dogs. This year I found some little chickens. I remembered where I had seen pine needles this year and that became the straw for the stable.

The year of 2007 was a special year because we were able to be together in Florida with all the family. We had a new grandson who was turning 5 months the 25th of December. We just enjoyed being together. This year Tim who is holding his nephew Jared in the picture is in Iraq, Cristina and Stephen, the second couple from the left are in Quito, Ecuador awaiting the birth of their second son. We of course are in Guatemala, Philip and Chrissy and Nick and Anita being in Gainesville, Florida.

How we enjoyed each other as we sat around the table that Christmas Eve. What a blessing to see our family growing! Every member a special unique person and very precious to us!

Christmas 2008 was a quieter Christmas for us, but we basked in the memory of last Christmas when we were together. We found it to be a peaceful Christmas nevertheless. We put the faces of all the family far away on the Christmas tree and found a lot comfort in that.

Little Luke in the way we know him now is on the top left star (its his first ultrasound picture) and his Daddy Stephen is on the right. Jared is on the bottom row and his Mommy Cristina is on the right. We thank God for Stephen as a part of our family. He has been a good husband and Daddy as a very special part of our family. Cristina has always been the creative part of our family with an eye for beauty and a unique precious way of expressing it.

In this next picture is our daughter in law, Chrissy, who has been a wonderful part of the family being the wife of Philip whose face is on the star by her. Philip has always been the unchangeable son who has always been there when we needed him. We thank God for him.

Here we have our son in law Nick. We couldn't have asked for a better husband for Anita than what he is. Of course Anita is the one below him. She has always added a lot of joy to our lives!

Last but not least is our Tim. It has been a challenge to our faith to say goodbye to him and see him go to Iraq. We are so thankful for God's care over his life as he is there serving in the Army! Our life without this our youngest child who will be 25 next year would not have been the same. He is a unique individual and we expect to see wonderful things in his life in the future!

Christmas as you can see has and always will be a delightful time where we are thankful that Jesus became flesh and lived with us. I can understand how the John could say many years later, We have seen his glory as the one and only who came from the Father full of grace and truth." Its because of Him that we can experience His joy in this season!

Who am I?

Who am I?



Who am I? They often tell me I would step from my prison cell
poised, cheerful, and sturdy,
like a nobleman from his country estate.
Who am? They often tell me I would speak with my guards
freely, pleasantly and firmly,
as I had it to command.
Who am I? I have also been told that I suffer the days of misfortune
with serenity, smiles and pride,
as someone accustomed to victory.

Am I really what others say about me?
Or am I only what I know of myself?
Restless, yearning and sick, like a bird in its cage,
struggling for the breath of life,
as though someone were choking my throat;
thirsting for kind words and human closeness,
shaking with anger at capricious tyranny and the pettiest slurs,
bedeviled by anxiety, awating great events that might never occur,
fearfully powerless and worried for friends far away,
weary and empty in prayer, in thinking, in doing,
weak, and ready to leave it all.

Who am I? This man or that other?
Am I then this man today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? An imposter to others,
but to me little more than a whining, despicable weakling?
Does what is in me compare to a vanquished army,
that flees in disorder before a battle already won?

Who am I? The mock me these lonely questions of mine,
Whoever I am, you know me, O God. You know I am yours.


I remember reading this poem back in college so many years ago. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this poem in prison before he was executed in June 1944. What a question, who am I? You would think that approaching the big 60 I would be certain of the woman I am but I still struggle with those same questions. I am not in prison waiting to be executed, but as this poem echoes the struggle that Paul reflected on in Romans 7:24-25: "Who will rescue me from this body that is doomed to die? Thank God! Jesus Christ will rescue me." I have had over the years some of the same feeling that this man of God had, seeing the different feelings from one day to another. I saw the missionary aunt and uncles that I grew up with in Spain as not having those questions, as being mature and all those questions settled as they went about the ministry God had given them. They seemed to have life all figured out. (Of course as I grew up and looked back I found out that was not so!)

I remember as a single school teacher in Mississippi feeling like there had to be more for me than just going to work, and going to several meetings a week. I left a sure job and went to Liberty Bible College without a job waiting for me there. Though a very risky, scary step, I took it on the promise from God that He would guide my steps. So I went to Pensacola and became a student at Liberty Bible College. I learned many wonderful things those two years and saw God provide for all my needs in the supernatural ways that only He can. I met Steve right after I first arrived. We both came to Liberty fall of 1973. Summer of 1975 we were married and it was the next year that we ended up in Costa Rica on our way to Honduras as missionaries. We had Cristina who was only months old as we left on our trip to Costa Rica for our 6 months stay so that Steve could learn Spanish.

I was just thinking of all the different hats that I have had to wear over the years. It's really amazing all the different experiences that the Lord has brought me through. I suppose if I had known about it ahead of time I wouldn't have believed that it would be possible. It is amazing how the Lord knows all the things that we carry around on the inside, all the hidden talents and capabilities that we don't know that are there.

When my brother John was born I was already 11 years old. I remember getting quite involved with taking care of him. It wasn't exactly like being his mother but it prepared me some for what would later on be my own 4 children.

Later on at 14 I began teaching a class of smaller children at a small church that Daddy helped start in Cornella, on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain You can see me in the back on the right beside my Daddy. I don't remember questioning when my Mother said that they needed me to teach. I just remember planning the class and somehow having things for them to do and enjoying myself in the process. When I began to try to decide what career I might be good at in college those years I had taught made it seem easy to just step in to training to be an Elementary School Teacher.

As a young Baptist girl I got involved with an organization called G.A. as short for Girl's Auxiliary. You could do the work and go from being a Maiden to a Queen Regent in Service. I have good memories all the scriptures that I had to memorize, and all the different things I had to do in order to pass each step. I remember doing a chart of Paul's missionary journeys and having to explain them to the person that was checking off my progress.

Little did I know that the memory work and all the understandings that I was gaining at that time was a solid base for what I would be involved in many years later in my life. When we began working with INSTE which was small groups studying how to be a disciple, doctrine and then getting into the Scriptures.. my early learning was a good foundation for that.

We spent more than 3 years

together studying. We lost some of the women along the way but we continued learning together. One lady became a widow during that time and we all walked through that experience with her. The relationships we formed then were relationships for a lifetime. It was a delight to see the women read the whole Bible for themselves for the first time as we studied Old and New Testament.

After graduating from the first level of INSTE I didn't have anyone that could go on with me to do the second level but in no time we began another totally different group where we met in our home (which doubles as our INSTE office) and I was off on another adventure.

It was an interesting mix of people. Three of us were American Missionaries, one guy was a church and school custodian, one was a single girl who is a Pastor of a small church in a poor area of town, and another girl was the wife of a church in town. Needless to say our times of discussion were interesting. The missionary couple found life too busy with their own responsibilites.. and the custodian found that his work load and the distances he had to travel made it impossible to continue. So Rebeca, Nancy, Steve and I continued till we finished.

Finally the day came in 2007 that we graduated and received our Bachelors in Theology.

I had graduated from Mississippi College with a BS in Elementary Education 26 years ago, but this occasion not only represented all the things I had learned but the relationships that I had made as we reflected on what we were learning. What rich memories!

I remember the five years I worked in the Elementary, High School Libraries as well as the Audio Visual Library in Alliance Academy in Quito, Ecuador. I had to have a job in order to have the 4 kids at school. I remember wanting to work in the library but at that time there seemed to

no opening so I had decided that I willing to clean bathrooms if necessary. I just felt like the kids needed to be in Alliance. Right before the kids would start school I received a call that I was needed in the Library. Talk about the Lord giving you the desires of your heart! Those 5 years were also rich in relationships made as I worked there. For sure when my kids had problems in school I was easy to locate so during those years I had a close relationship with the different teachers involved with my children.

It was a time where I was very busy, but at the same time I also found myself deeply involved with what my kids were doing because I was there seeing it all take place. I went to see all the plays they were involved in almost every time they performed them and was always proud. Anita provided me with the opportunity to see JV Volleyball, Basketball, and Soccer. We mothers cheered the teams on.

How was I to know when I was supervising the games for the birthday parties for my brother John that I was learning things that would later on teach other people as they learned how to work with kids in church. I had learned by practical experience what would work and what would not.

So without trying I found myself teaching people how to work with kids, how to keep their attention, and how to effectively teach them.

I also found myself teaching adults games that they could teach children that would contribute to the lesson on deck for that week. A lot of times I had to teach people to remember what it was like to play, and some who had never really played had to learn how to play.

Back when my Dad and Mother had me taking piano lesson I would never have thought that someday I would actually play in worship or lead others in worship. I sang in groups in High School, even in a quartet but the thought that I would lead others in worship was a thought beyond my imagination. Just to know that others might be listening was enough to make me lose it. However over the years worship just would bubble up out of my heart and before I knew it I was doing it. God is gracious!


I could talk about transalating, speaking, working with a weekly ladies group, and many more things. Who am I really? A sum of all those things and many more. As Peter says it in I Peter 1:3: "Praise God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is so good, and by raising Jesus from death, he has given us new life and a hope that lives on." I am thankful for that hope that He give me. I am thankful that all the things that I have experienced in my life so far have been stepping stones to other things that I did later on.
As David said in Psalms 139:16, "Even before I was born, You had written in Your book everything I would do." As I learn every day God's truth about myself I am able to be the woman He made me to be. What a hope I have, my past present and future are in His hands!

So now all of my children have left home and three of them are building their own homes. I see them dealing with the same issues that I have and realize that it is all a part of being a human being living in this fallen world.

How easy it is to