Our 2024 Savage Christmas Card
from Musanze with love!
During this season of the year, most of us spend time reflecting and remembering. We look back to Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem and the promise that was fulfilled with that amazing event. I also tend to look back over the year and ponder what I’ve seen and heard - what I’ve learned (or more likely, what I need to learn).
As I think about Christmas, I want to have eyes to see and ears to hear, as Jesus said in Matthew 13. As Jesus taught the Parable of the Sower to his disciples, he said, “But blessed are your eyes because they see and your ears because they hear.” Another version of this that I found is, "Happy ye, whose eyes and ears, voluntarily and gladly opened, are drinking in the light divine."
Today, my prayer is that you and I can both look and see the light divine.
I recently watched The Chosen’s depiction of the Christmas story called The Shepherd. I encourage you to watch this, as well. When I think of eyes wide open ready to see and ears ready to hear, I thought of the shepherds at the birth of Jesus. Their eyes got to see and hear “the light divine”, the glorious angels, the first news of His birth. They got to see our Savior. Without eyes ready to see, they may have missed it. They may have never known the good news.
This past year, God has blessed me and Thom with seeing glimpses of Him. This has come through hearing the stories of the people we have met, humbly attempting to teach and mentor our students, parenting our own children, and experiencing things in such a different part of the world that have brought more perspective.
One example of this was the day I got to spend at the district hospital in Butaro in northern Rwanda. After a beautiful but long drive on a rocky dirt road over mountains overlooking lakes, we arrived at a hospital where I got to join a friend who is working to teach medical students in Rwanda. There in the hospital, a mother and her baby sat in a large open room with many other patients. She had been there for 4 months, waiting on answers, with only one bed to lie on, no car to travel back and forth, many kilometers from her family. Experiences like this remind me of just how much I have, and just how much I must share what I have with others. I’ve found that so many people here have so little compared to what I’m used to - to what I have come to expect as “normal”. At the same time, there is little to no sense of entitlement from many that I have met. People seem to live at peace, with a quiet hope.
Peace and hope reminds me of Advent - of waiting for Christ at his birth, in His return to earth, and his coming in our hearts. Our “Rwandan family” and friends from here have been such a support and blessing to us. There’s a photo below of the large Thanksgiving lunch at the Millers. Also, I’ve been blessed to help with Bible club at school for grades 3 to 5. We’ve been studying the prophesies about Jesus written in Isaiah. These kids are interested and have so many great questions - ears to hear!
For our “Christmas card”, the best family photo I have to share is, hilariously, this one from VVA’s Light Party (aka the Halloween alternative).
I want to have eyes to see my own blessings. Thom and the kids are four examples of God’s grace to me. Thom loves teaching math and computer science to grades 6 through 9. He is helping with administration at VVA this year, as well, which has been a challenge and a joy. He also continues to coordinate biweekly workout groups for young men in Musanze. Hannah Joy is in the third grade and loves to play basketball after lunch, enjoys math and art, and has been learning to crochet. Mary Hope is in the first grade, and loves to talk about space and read any book she can find. She spends a lot of time singing in the bathroom and very carefully aligning all of her dolls and stuffed animals. John Valor has so much excitement and energy. He is super interested in paper airplanes and volcanoes (constructing one out of tables and blankets in our living room almost every day). I think his favorite thing may be cereal.
This Christmas, and all the time, I pray that I can keep eyes to see and ears to hear what God is showing me. I pray that all of us can be like plants that grow and thrive, without stones that hinder our growth and without worldly things that so easily entangle. I’m praying for God’s Spirit to empower us with HIS wisdom and HIS perspective, HIS presence (another theme this year), as we just….abide.
MERRY CHRISTMAS, everyone! Have a great holiday season, and we hope to talk with you and even SEE you visiting here soon. :).
Love,
Thom, Bekah, Hannah Joy, Mary Hope, and John Valor