Sharing the Joy of Christmas

February 10, 2023

Christmas is a time of joy and sharing. Conscious of this, our International Novitiate community in Arusha hosted about forty children from the neighboring poor families for a Christmas party on 23^rd December 2022.

Each Friday our novices go to visit families. This pastoral activity helps them to meet families. They get an opportunity to listen and share their stories. Prior to this party, our novices went to some of the poor families that they had visited before and invited the children. On the 23^rd of December, the children arrived as early as 8:30 A.M. The excitement on their faces told what their day would look like. The Novices had prepared some games and sports for the children at the school field. Before they began the sports, the children were served some biscuits and juice which gave them the energy to jump up and down for about three hours.

The reason behind inviting these children was the fact of the famine caused by a prolonged drought in Tanzania and other countries in East Africa. This has made life very difficult. Most of these children get only one meal a day. This condition will persist for the whole of this year because the rains have not been favorable. For this reason, we knew most of these children will not even have a proper meal on Christmas day.

Each of the families was gifted with five kilograms of maize flour and three kilograms of beans. The children went home very happy and full of Christmas joy.

In addition to sharing Christmas joy with the children, on 24^th December in the morning, the novices divided themselves into four groups. They took three kilograms of rice and maize flour to eight families caring for sick and aged people in our neighborhood. At each of these families, they sang Christmas carols and spent some time sharing with them and encouraging them.

Our novices also visited the families of our workers. They sang Christmas carols, and we gave them some Christmas gifts. These gifts of maize flour, rice, chicken, and beans are very practical so that the families are assured of a good meal on Christmas day.

By Sister Mary Pascalia Ndunge, SND