Holly Days: Christmas in Guam

Visitors, traditions, time with friends, Abe back home and Christmas...what a wonderful week. Last Sunday we met for a devotional down in Merizo. We have come to love these gatherings and this one was my favorite. The children reenacted the Nativity and then we took turns sharing and singing our favorite Christmas carols. As we sat there in the warm breeze of the night with the palm trees swaying and heard a few dogs and a distant rooster a friend pointed out this was probably a similar setting to when Christ was born. (I hope for Mary's sake it was). We have missed the usual weather of Christmas, I think because it is what we are accustomed to, but enjoying Christmas in shorts and no worry over slick roads has its perks we have realized.

Nativity cast

For a few weeks we have enjoyed the occasional company of a childhood friend of Abe's. Abe and Johnathon knew each other when they were 10 years old living in Puyallup, WA. They bumped into each other while attending BYU and then last month, a serendipitous meeting found them both of the tiny island of Tinian. Abe was there for work and Johnathon, a Marine, was conducting an exercise there. Johnathon is a fabulous cook and he shard his talents with us while we became acquainted and caught up on the last 30 years. We were thrilled to find out Johnathon was able to fly his family, who is stationed in Japan, to Guam for a week and we loved getting to know them while we showed them around our island. We went swimming, snorkeling, the girls went caroling with our mutual group, we took them to Chamorro village, and visited the Inarajan Pools. It was so fun play hostess and get to know their family.

Carabao at Chamorro Village

View from up above the pools

What a spot to watch the waves. I might come back with a book.

Inarajan Pools

Jumping off the diving board

Suzy and Penelope taking the plunge

View to the south

Since we moved here with only our suitcases and shipped out a few boxes, Christmas decorations did not make the cut. Actually, we did bring our stockings, but that was it. Knowing our traditions of cutting a fresh tree from the lot right by our house was not an option and the trees they ship over are expensive and half dead when they get here, we had to settle for a fake tree. Now for ornaments, after scouring pintrest for ideas and hitting the only thing one could consider a craft store on island and not finding much, we were happy with our creations. The girls and I had fun making ornaments to adorn the branches of our tree. A generous friend who was spending the holidays in Australia let us borrow her decorations. With her beautiful nativity and a few other things, it actually felt like Christmas here. We carried out a few of our traditions like Christmas stories in the evenings and even though the thermometer registers in the 80s, we drank our fill of hot chocolate. One event we enjoy during the holidays is making and decorating gingerbread houses and men. We invited a family we met here from Pohnpei, and their 11 children, who had never heard of gingerbread to share our tradition this year. We had a great time with them. Abe and I loved watching the parents work together to construct their house. One of the teenage girls told us they had never been invited over to dinner at someone else's home.


Some of our ornaments

Suzy always a help with the kiddos

Albert family working on their house

"Teen table"

On Christmas Eve Abe, Isaac and I joined a group from our ward for a sunrise hike. We hiked Mt. Lam Lam, the highest point on Guam, which isn't saying much. I read somewhere it is actually the tallest mountain in the world because it starts 7 miles underwater in the Marianas trench. Problem is 95% percent of it is underwater. I am not trying to say this equates with scaling Everest in any way, but it did give us some pretty views.


View inland


View of the ocean

On top of Guam

Christmas was superb. As usual, in preparation for the big day, there was a fair amount of shopping (thank you Amazon) and baking. We were busy making home made gifts, Addie was the champion this year coming up with fun creative ideas for everyone. On Christmas Eve we had friends over for a fondue dinner and then after reading the Polar Express, we tucked the younger kids in bed. Abe and I, aided by Isaac and Savannah finished the wrapping, homemade gifts and making the breakfast casserole to be all ready to eat in the morning. We were all excited to see Santa makes deliveries in Guam and had fun opening gifts with the Sandels, a newly-wed couple we have become good friends with. The missionaries joined us for breakfast and shared a wonderful message with us. We skyped with my family living in several states as we gave my parents their gift. We decided to go snorkeling, when else are we going to be able to snorkel on Christmas? Then we enjoyed a fun evening of games, movies and hot chocolate.