Another Laureles Happening

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So the other day I told Girlfriend that I needed some photos from Laureles so that I could update the blog. Yesterday the youth from the Mennonite Church trekked out to Los Laureles to have Bible School with the little children there; apparently it was an impressive Bible School because she emailed me the following this morning:
In the Spanish-speaking countries the tradition of Christmas gifts is somtheing that is mainly represented and linked to the Child Jesus and The Wise Men - Santa is known and growing in popularity but tradition says that gifts come from the former. Curiously though in this past week's Bible lesson not one child mentioned the Child Jesus and much less, The Wise Men when I asked them about Christmas and our reasons for celebrating it.


Some of their responses were as follows:

- Christmas is for setting off fireworks and rockets (very good observation)
- Christmas means that the fairy godparents bring gifts to the children. ("fairy godparents"? Do they mean the Wise Men?)
- Saint Nicholas, who lives in the U.S.A., comes to Honduras to throw out gifts to the children from his sleigh in the air. (Santa is an American? He tosses them to children from 2000 ft. up in the air?)
- The Americans bring us gifts.
- Christmas is for parents to get drunk.
- Christmas is when we have new clothing.
- Christmas is when the Devil comes to carry off all the bad children.

After all of these glorious answers I asked them:


"What about Jesus?"
They answered, "Oh, he's good and he takes care of us."
"That's right," I said "but what does Jesus have to do with Christmas?"
One of them answered me: "Well, God gives gifts to Jesus at Christmas because he is his father."

Hearing all of this I decided that we would need the entire month to teach these children about the birth of Jesus and what it means for us...definitely the entire month. 

When I showed them this scene, our cute little Ronald turned to his seat-mate and said: "I told you that angels could fly!"

 Here the children shouted that Jesus' Fairy Godparents had come to visit.

 At the sight of this scene I had one little interrogator ask me incredulously: "And the cows didn't eat the baby Jesus?"

 All good friends coloring away.

 Ronald decided to go independent, as he always does.

"I finished coloring, can I leave now?"


Ever took this photo, he was annoyed because the other children didn't let him take a normal photo without them interjecting; this was the only one that came out mildly well.

Well then, that was our Christmas lesson for the week.

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