Our Digital Fall Christmas Card
Dear friends and family back in the Midwest,
September is an odd time in El Paso. When I walk into a store, there are fall decorations galore. Starbucks is selling their seasonal pumpkin drinks. The corn maze in a nearby town in New Mexico is open for business. However, as the day progresses, my burnt orange sweater feels like a foolish choice for scorching heat. The people at the corn maze spend most of their time in the shade to escape the hot El Paso sun and the 95 degree weather. The succulents I received at an event shriveled up and turned brown before I even got them home due to them sitting in the hot car.
Even more strangely, I’ve found myself watching Christmas movies already and making a pumpkin pie. As I long for the winter months in hopes of true fall weather, I find myself also desiring to write a sort of Christmas newsletter to everyone we loved back home. It’s impossible to keep up with everyone, yet I feel I have so much to share. Therefore, here is an unconventional digital fall Christmas card, should you choose to continue reading.
First, I want to give glory to God for providing housing for Eli and I. At our new church, there is a couple who offered us to live in their home for free as they are spending an extended period of time out of the country. We have already been able to host two young adult events at the house, and we enjoy walking around the neighborhood and commenting on the nearby architecture of the houses and how they choose to style their lawn (typically with a bunch of rocks rather than grass.)
Eli and I are both enjoying our new jobs. He has been working hard at scheduling volunteers for all the children’s ministries in the fall, and he wrote an original song for the children in the church to sing and perform based on Deuteronomy 6:4-9. We have been enjoying getting to know the kids in the youth group, and he has started teaching them once or twice a month on Sunday evenings. The two pastors at our church are super encouraging and supportive of Eli, and I couldn’t be happier with the people Eli is starting out his ministry career with.
As for me, I am mostly enjoying teaching grades 4-8 at a private Christian school. While it comes with it’s own set of challenges, a few sweet things about teaching the younger grades have been randomly receiving hugs throughout the week, having some 5th graders bring in their stuffed llamas to hang out with my stuffed llamas for the day, and easier assignments to grade. In addition, I have volunteered to sing in chapel a few times a month, which has been fun. I give my students a Bible verse of the month to memorize in Spanish for a small extra credit opportunity. I am also choosing a student of the week each week to pray for in class. While there are many things I miss about my time teaching in West Lafayette, I feel I have grown into a better teacher through experiencing a new school and adapting some of my teaching practices.
On the social side of things, I remember bawling multiple times leaving all my dear friends in Lafayette. However, making friends here hasn’t been as hard as I was expecting. There are a lot of new people at the church who arrived around the same time as us, so it has been fun all being new and seeking community together. Additionally, we hang out with Eli’s family multiple times a week, so that has been a blessing that has made the move across the country not feel isolating.
Culturally, El Paso is very huggy. Spell check is telling me that huggy is not a word, but I cannot think of a more perfect word to describe the warm culture here. It has been humorous for me to go from a church where hand-shaking was the normal greeting to a church where hugging is the status quo. However, I will say that when I was teaching my 6th graders descriptive adjectives this past week and the word cariñoso (affectionate) came up, I told my students that I thought the culture of El Paso was cariñoso. One student responded something along the lines of, “Oh no, not if you go to IHOP late at night.” I thought that was hilarious.
Furthermore, the birthday party culture here also has me a little baffled. The amount of birthday parties we have been invited to in the short amount of time we have been here is probably equivalent or more to the amount of birthday parties I would have been invited to in an entire year back in Indiana. What can I say – people here like to party.
While there is much more I could share, I will save it for another time. Thanks for reading this far. Please know I love and miss our community back in Indiana dearly. I am deeply grateful for such fond memories of the last six years of my life, and I can’t wait to come back and visit during the holiday season. As much as it hurt to leave, I am very grateful for the community we are finding here and the ways we are seeing God provide.
Sincerely and with love,
Allison
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