Christmas Eve in Asia

It's Christmas Eve here in Malaysia. What a new and wild place to be for such a familiar date on our calendar.


Last night we sat down and watched the Willow Creek Christmas Eve service. As always, an over-the-top, but beautiful production. All the elements of art come through in such a creative way. I've already sent an email to our friends back in South Barrington, giving our congratulations on a job well-done. Tonight is our church's Christmas Eve service. No, we won't have flying acrobats, kites, or super-stud violin players. But we WILL have an authentic service that celebrates the birth of Christ -- an event that seems even more significant when celebrating it from the midst of a Muslim nation.

Here are some pictures from the past several days, just for your enjoyment...

We hosted a grand party last week. I think we counted 64 people crammed into our house. Here is a picture of me leading one of the activities, an icebreaker game that is a famous Boncimino tradition. If you've been to one of our parties, you know what I'm talking about.


Our Petronas Twin Towers were dressed for the party. Here is the final product:


I know I put this photo at the top of the post, but it's so good, it bears repeating. Here are Ashley and Cheryl after our party. The time of this photo was about 1:00am after the last guest had left. We were tired, but had so much fun throwing the gig:


Cheryl now has her fancy Apple PowerBook Pro, and is getting used to it for her first day of class, which is now just two weeks away. Here she is just after powering it up...


Ashley and Brooke have been so awesome. They made Christmas presents for all of their friends, using magazine photos, mirrors from IKEA, and assorted letters and words. Very Laurie-like if you ask me. Just so loving and thoughtful. Here Cheryl helps by putting some finishing touches on the frames:


We have converted one of our living spaces into a study, now that we have THREE students in the house. We bought a ton of IKEA shelves and cabinets, and spent most of the day Friday assembling as any good IKEA customer knows. (We are champs with Allen wrenches..) Anyway, the final product is amazing. We have more storage than Fort Knox (if we only had some gold bullion to store...) Here is a glimpse of the new pad:


Finally, our Alfredo is being a good Christmas canine. Last night he was just sitting by the Christmas tree, so I tried to capture the moment with a flash-less picture. Doesn't Fred look cool in this shot?


NEWS UPDATE: We are going to be logged into Skype a lot over the next couple of days so that we can talk with friends and family. Please log in and give us a call. We'll be using my Skype ID. If you don't have it, send me an email. (I don't want to publish it out here on the wild wild Net.)

Happy Christmas to all.

greg