Our family spent the 2009 Christmas season and New Year's Day in Hong Kong. Although we desired to travel to Thailand or some other place, we decided against the idea. 
The reason was partly financial and partly because we are hoping to travel to South Africa and Namibia during the summer of 2010. We know the summer trip will need quite some money. So we are trying to curtail other travels to try to increase our chances of taking the trip.
We volunteered at the Cross-roads, a non-profit organization based in Hong Kong. Crossroads Foundation ships supplies to different parts of the world to help the poor, homeless, and orphans. They also work in collaboration with other organizations. 
We assisted them with sorting of donated items and with furniture inventory.
Although we tried to reduce expenses by not traveling out of Hong Kong, we got two new bicycles, the game of Blokus and the game of Life. The boys got Tamari a book, and Henry mints (yeah!). Flora's church bought us a set of bed sheet and duvet cover, which is nice.
Tamari got 12 boxes of chocolates. She said, "...... now seriously do I look like I need 12 boxes of chocolates ????" Anyway, she re-gifted them and added a prepaid octopus (multi-purpose ) card to each package for our refugee population that the church organized Christmas lunch for. So it worked out very nicely!! 
God is so good .... I (Tamari) had not counted the packages as we were rushing baking cookies for the Christmas service bake sale (proceeds to go to our new church building in Hong Kong), and wrapping chocolates and then I left the wrapped packages behind for Alex and Chika to bring, as I had armloads of cookies. Then I got to the train station and realized that I did not really know how many octopus cards I should buy. So I asked the woman for 10 cards. As she got them all charged and ready, the Holy Spirit said, "Buy two more." I told the lady to add two more, and then I went off to church. At the end of service I sat down with my box of greeting cards, octopus cards, and the boxes of chocolates and sure enough there were 12 boxes! Yeah!!! Perfect dear!!! And I will not even be gaining one pound from all of that chocolate!!
The Christmas vacation has been a restful time for us. We have been riding our bikes, and have played both games, watched too much "Seinfeld" shows, checked out a movie called "Stranger than Fiction" (pretty strange but pretty good movie) .
The reason was partly financial and partly because we are hoping to travel to South Africa and Namibia during the summer of 2010. We know the summer trip will need quite some money. So we are trying to curtail other travels to try to increase our chances of taking the trip.
We volunteered at the Cross-roads, a non-profit organization based in Hong Kong. Crossroads Foundation ships supplies to different parts of the world to help the poor, homeless, and orphans. They also work in collaboration with other organizations. 
We assisted them with sorting of donated items and with furniture inventory.Although we tried to reduce expenses by not traveling out of Hong Kong, we got two new bicycles, the game of Blokus and the game of Life. The boys got Tamari a book, and Henry mints (yeah!). Flora's church bought us a set of bed sheet and duvet cover, which is nice.
Tamari got 12 boxes of chocolates. She said, "...... now seriously do I look like I need 12 boxes of chocolates ????" Anyway, she re-gifted them and added a prepaid octopus (multi-purpose ) card to each package for our refugee population that the church organized Christmas lunch for. So it worked out very nicely!! 
God is so good .... I (Tamari) had not counted the packages as we were rushing baking cookies for the Christmas service bake sale (proceeds to go to our new church building in Hong Kong), and wrapping chocolates and then I left the wrapped packages behind for Alex and Chika to bring, as I had armloads of cookies. Then I got to the train station and realized that I did not really know how many octopus cards I should buy. So I asked the woman for 10 cards. As she got them all charged and ready, the Holy Spirit said, "Buy two more." I told the lady to add two more, and then I went off to church. At the end of service I sat down with my box of greeting cards, octopus cards, and the boxes of chocolates and sure enough there were 12 boxes! Yeah!!! Perfect dear!!! And I will not even be gaining one pound from all of that chocolate!!
The Christmas vacation has been a restful time for us. We have been riding our bikes, and have played both games, watched too much "Seinfeld" shows, checked out a movie called "Stranger than Fiction" (pretty strange but pretty good movie) .
