PHC Christmas Project

Christy packing

Only 20 days until Christmas and here in the Central African Republic we are busily preparing!!! Christy and Brenda, two PHC volunteers, arrived in Bangui Wednesday night and we have been hard at work on the PHC Christmas project ever since (with the exception of a few trips to the pool and a couple breaks to eat Rosalie's homemade ice cream). It seems a little strange packing gifts and listening to Christmas music when it’s 95 degrees outside. 

boxes full of sardines

There are two parts to our Christmas project. The first part involves packing the Christmas gifts that we will give out to all the orphans in the PHC program the last day of school before Christmas break. Each drawstring bag has a notebook, a big crayon, a bracelet, a little ball, sardines, rice, sugar, and coffee in it.

all the goods

In this culture when you give someone a gift it is usually shared with the whole family. The idea in giving the children food is that they will be able to have a Christmas meal with their family. Many of these kids’ families don’t have much food so it will be very exciting for these kids to be able to take something home for their families that they can all benefit from and enjoy.

Brenda behind the camera

hard at work

The second part of the Christmas project is having each orphan color a Christmas card and get their picture taken to send to their sponsor. Brenda and I are in charge of the photo taking part of the project. It gets a little hectic when you’re working with hundreds of kids who aren’t good at standing in lines but it’s fun making them smile!

coloring her Christmas card

a proud little girl with her picture of Mary and Jesus

dressed for Christmas!

We have three days to go and we’re over halfway done with packing the 1,100 bags and we only have about 250 more individual photos to take. I can’t wait to actually give out the gifts in a few weeks!