The Busia missionaries arrived and brought our turkey with them. He spent the night in the back yard.
We have a very small refrigerator so we had to clean it out before we could have a place for him. We drank the juice and used up the tortillas. We evicted the leftovers that claimed squatter’s rights. We pulled out jams, cheese, water jugs and other “nice to keep cool” things. And we did have room for the important things: pies and turkey!
Thursday the six missionaries came for breakfast. Then we got to work. The missionaries turned and stuffed the dolls. 
They clipped out balls from soft foam. 
They rolled and cut and baked cookies. We weren't sure what Elder B's mom would say about him hanging around with dolls. Or maybe he's just all dolled up. He's definately having a ball.
We sent the missionaries off to find lunch and rejoined at 1pm to take the things to an orphanage. We’d never been there, but one of our members, George, works there. I was surprised at how upscale it was. The buildings were attractive and the children had plenty of toys and nice cribs. The number of workers to baby ratio was very good.
The orphanage takes abandoned babies and raises them or adopts them out. They have several facilities all over Kenya, and this one mostly does birth to 3, with about 10 disabled children between 3 and 10. It made our home made toys appear a bit shabby, but we suggested they might find a less fortunate place to share them. And they were very appreciative about what we brought.
We took a tour of the orphanage and then it was feeding time. 
What fun! It was nice to hold babies!
It was really fun for me, and gradually the missionaries joined in and helped out. 
We finished about 3:30 and headed home for last minute gift wrapping and skyping of children.
Christmas day I got up early to start with the fixings. The dinner was a mix of American and African. We had turkey. Our butcher said we should stuff it with vegetables. I had onions, so we cut small ones in half and stuffed them in. Rebecca (bless her heart!) sent a brown in bag and that was most helpful. I did potatoes in the crock pot. And cut up pineapple and had shredded carrot salad. Once that was done we watched a video with the missionaries. Then we opened gifts. They had fun with the gift exchange—stealing from others (I guess that commandment was waived for Christmas) and laughing at the fun things they got—a wind up bunny, an African hat, flexible snowman, etc. They each got a letter of appreciation from another missionary. And they got a DVD about the mission from the Mission President. Of course THAT had to go in to the DVD player. They loved watching it and seeing all their previous missionary companions!
Good thing. The turkey that was supposed to cook in 3.5 hours in the brown in bag actually took closer to 5. Maybe it was because the bird took up most of the oven. Or maybe because the oven shuts off when the timer goes off… and it did for an unknown period of time. It was easy in that the last things that needed to be done: mash the potatoes, carve the turkey, and make fried cabbage all happened in the last half hour and we had lots of help. The elders really enjoyed the meal and were very appreciative.
The turkey was delicious and moist. The fork only bent a little… and I avow it’s due to the weakness of the forks. Fragile things. The turkey—it was fine! And a good meal was had by all. After the missionaries left we cleaned up, deboned the turkey, and collapsed. Oh yes, we also opened the presents to each other. Which of course we both knew about as we’d been present during the shopping…but… What a surprise! That’s one advantage of a forgetful memory!
Here is our faithful little tree.
These were good days. Different than a home Christmas, but good, none the less.
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