Celebrating The Fourth of July

On the Fourth of July our missionary team and a few visitors had a great celebration together! One challenge of raising kids overseas is that there are many aspects of your home culture that your kids might never be exposed to or learn. The majority of missionary kids on our team here have spent more years overseas than in the United States. Celebrating American holidays provides both an opportunity for our children to learn traditions and to have a small taste of American culture for us all.

As we gathered together to celebrate, everyone brought foods that reminded them of celebrating the Fourth of July. Esther even baked and decorated a special American flag cake. 

David cooked some delicious hamburgers! 

And many other fabulous foods were brought including tortilla chips and cheese dip, barbecue chicken sandwiches and other patriotic looking desserts. 

Once we had all gathered, we went to the field behind our house for a fun game of kickball! There was a lot of instruction related to the rules of the game, but it didn't keep us from having a great time.

Our neighbors in Buwundo village enjoyed watching this American game from over the hedge. Thankfully, I got to be on my husband's team because he was (and is) amazing! You can guess which team won...

After our fun game, we went inside for dinner. I realized that we had forgotten to sing the National Anthem before our game, so we sang it before dinner instead. Then the kids roasted hot dogs over the fire and ran around like crazy outside. The adults had a nice quieter time sitting around our dinner table and visiting.

After dinner we all went outside to light our version of fireworks. These are advertised and sold as birthday candles here in Uganda. They work great as sparklers! 

And to top off the evening, Claudia brought out one of her Chinese lanterns to light and send off. There was great celebration when it successfully cleared the solar panels and floated up into the night sky! 

We had a fun night celebrating together! I'm very thankful that my missionary team here feels like family! And our missionary family is growing!!!! More details in a post to come....