Oh My Goodness

This Christmas was a surprise-filled display of utter awkwardness. I will do my best to capture all it's goodness but I fear I will fail, so just imagine all the details that I forgot to write.

It all started with a phone call Christmas eve day around 2PM. A 25ish-year-old new member from mainland China studying at a university in Scotland appeared in Berlin and needed a place to stay overnight. The missionaries called the stake president, who called some bishops, looking for a mandarin speaking member who wouldn't mind having him overnight. We got the phone call asking if we could help him out, of course.

I get the irony -- a lonely traveler on Christmas can't find a place at the inn and is looking for a place to stay. I should have immediately opened my home and welcomed him in no questions asked, but I was pretty upset for a variety of reasons: this is our last time as a family together before Jeremy leaves for his deployment, I'm not prepared food/present wise, my house is a mess, I have two small children and I don't know how I feel about a stranger in the house with them, are my dogs going to kill him in the night, will I have to teach English for the next few days, etc. Needless to say, I wouldn't be much of a Christian if I didn't act as Christ would, so we offered up our spare bedroom and frantically began preparing for his arrival.

I wish I could tell you more about who he was or why he was here. For the next three days (yup, they just said he'd be here one night but he loved it so much he extended his trip) he asked me ONE question. The rest of the time I was stuck having to come up with a MILLION questions for our visitor to fill the super awkward silence. He always answered with one word answers so there wasn't much to expand on any topic I was able to come up with.

Day One -- He tagged along to our friends house with us. They managed to figure out that he was hitch hiking with a friend from France, they got into a fight and he ended up in Berlin solo. He was planning to hitch hike from Berlin to Freiberg and needed a place to stay along the way. His goal was to travel around Europe for the next two months (by hitch hiking) and see as many temples as he can. That's how he found us. He was terrified of our dogs, so they spent most of the next three days in their boxes. I had NO food in my house so we ate a lot of what we could find around the house and even dipped into our food storage.

Day Two - Christmas -- I had been planning on playing secret Santa for a lady in our ward so I had a chocolate bar, mini rubik's cube, a pretty journal I bought in India, and an Ensign about temples ready to wrap for our surprise guest. After we opened up gifts, I made him craft some labels and help make the Christmas candy for our neighbors. He didn't speak the WHOLE time. On the way to hand out presents I realized that he hadn't eaten since breakfast, even though I told him to snack on the finger foods I put on the table and showed him where all the snacks/food was. He was starving. My friend Shawna was just about to eat when I stopped by with her present, so I made our visitor a plate of food, which he held on his lap the whole way home and starred at.

Day Three -- We went to one of our friend's house for a boxing day party. Our visitor sat in the corner for most of the party, even though I asked him four or five times to come closer and join in the conversations. Jeremy had given up trying to socialize with him (or socialize him, however you want to think of it) and left me to keep going over to check up on him. Near the end he sat at the kids' table and helped build a gingerbread house. That evening we drove him into the city to catch a train; although I am pretty sure we walked back out to the road after we left and tried to hitch hike.

So... ummmm... not much more I can say about that. Total awkward balloons for all involved. I'm expecting HUGE blessings. HUGE.

And as a side note, I found a ton of Otter Pop wrappers in the garbage in his room. I guess he was eating the warm liquid freezies from the cupboard thinking they were some kind of fancy drink. I guess he wasn't THAT hungry.

Overall, I'm glad that our visitor got to spend the holidays with fellow members. I hope that he felt comfortable and loved, even though you could cut the awkwardness with a knife. It was a good experience for us as a family to realize that acts of charity don't come when you are always prepared. It forced us to get out and make the most of the holiday because we had someone counting on us make it special. It's certainly was a Christmas we won't forget anytime soon.

I didn't get many photos on Christmas day. That bummed me out, but I had other things on my mind.

Love this video of Abby happy (mad?) that Santa came. She wasn't fazed at all that we had a guest Christmas morning. Although she did make a pile behind her of all her gifts just in case the strange man got an inkling to play with any of her goodness.