Christmas Eve

This Christmas, we adopted a refugee family from Myanmar. They moved from Myanmar to Dallas two months ago because "President bad." We received the family information on Sunday, visited them on Monday to see what their needs were, and shopped all day Tuesday. They are a family of six in a two bedroom apartment. They had next to nothing and we called on friends and family to donate supplies and funds to give them an amazing Christmas. We took the girls over on Christmas Eve and filled their living room with gifts. The children, two of which were our girls' ages, took to each other immediately even though they couldn't communicate with words.
While the kids were playing, the mother opened all the packages. She was thrilled and she and her husband laughed a lot. She held up baby soap and asked, "What?" I pointed to a child and mimed washing her. Next was lotion, so I rubbed my hands and arms. The shower cleaner, windex and comet included cleaning motions. Then came the toilet cleaner. She laughed at the funny shaped bottle and looked at me. I pointed to my rear-end and pretended to sit on a toilet, then clean it. That's Christmas spirit!
While we were figuring that all out, Mike heard the father calling, "Sir? Sir?" The dad had the new vacuum out and couldn't figure out how to assemble it. Mike set it up and then set up the microwave, showing them how to set and stop the cook time. Later, we heard, "Sir?" again and saw the parents laughing with each other. They couldn't figure out how to open it and were tickled at the situation.
The children had never seen play-doh, so they all had a great time playing. Abby ventured into the girls' room, which had one mattress on the floor for the parents and two girls. Other than that, the room was bare. Later Abby said, "Mom, they don't have anything and we have so much!"
It was an amazing experience and we will never forget these sweet people.