It's that time of year, again, for the Koen family to celebrate December with feasts. Each child secretly prepares a feast for the rest of family. As you know or, as you'll learn, they put a lot of creativity in preparing and plotting and planning for this special opportunity to amaze their brothers and sisters. I love how excited they are to be generous in their thoughtfulness towards their family. They would never choose a food that they knew someone didn't care for. They are amazingly knowledgeable about each others' likes and dislikes. It's a true feast. Complete with decorations, food, food and more food, gifts, rowdy laughter and lots of thankfulness. Nothing like having someone serve you to make you realize how blessed you are to have people who love you and care about you.
This year, we've had to postpone our feasting to the month of January. Bill and I work with an online gift shop and December is crazy busy. We wanted to be able to take our time and really waller in the fun and festivities of our feast days activities. Plus, we figure January needs a major boost in it's holiday appeal- no offense to Martin Luther King, Jr. So here we go!
Tim: This is our nephew, Timothy. He's my older brother's son. Tim is 24 and a big man. He's over 6' and is just big to boot. His grandfather calls him "the gentle giant." And he is very gentle. It's difficult to describe him as he's very quiet and not the easiest guy to get to know. (A little back story: he came to live here in May of this past year. His brother, Phil, also lives here. They work together in Phil's flooring business. They're from Arizona, but they're good sports about the cold weather.) Tim likes to work. Video games. Cook. He is one of those unusual guys who doesn't waste time trying to prove he's a man- he just is. He has a funny way about him- he rarely answers questions- especially if he doesn't want to. When asked, "What did you do, today?" and he spent the day playing video games, he doesn't want to be judged. So he just keeps doing what he's doing and ignores the question all together. While you stand there wondering if he's going to answer. Nope, I guess not. If you don't expect a big conversation, he's very easy to spend time with. He's easy to love.
Curry House. That was his theme for his feast. I asked him if he had every been to a curry house, and he said no, but his sister had made curry for them a couple times. He'd like to have a curry house, someday. That's Tim. I don't usually help the older guys with their feasts- much. I'll stir for them while they work on something else. Maybe make a suggestion or two. But that's the sum of what I do. He had spent the day making these luminary wrappers for candles. Each one had a different letter for the words CURRY HOUSE. He lined them up across the table. Added to the twinkle lights we already have in the room, the light was really very warm. He wasn't sure how much to make for 10 people. The recipe he got off a manga website was for 4 people... so he made enough for 20, just to be safe. No one minds leftovers around here. Now, believe it or not, I have a lot of big pots and bowls. He used every single one of them! The kitchen was like something from a movie- you know, the ones where they have every surface stacked high with messy pots and pans and the chef is at the oven cooking a masterpiece. Once Tim added the curry to the pan, everyone in the house knew what he was up to in the kitchen.
He invited his guests in and they were suitably impressed with his table settings. He had brought in a small table(a sewing machine cabinet- I don't know where that came from;-) into the dining room and sat the rice and chicken curry on it for people to help themselves. Eva and Bekah especially love curry and often ask for it for their birthday meal. There were no complaints. Apparently that Manga site knew what they were talking about. So we ate and ate. It was funny- the meal was just like Tim. There was no appetizer. No side dishes. No dessert. No beverage- aside the iced tea I made at the last minute. He said he figured everyone would get full on the curry. And we did.
Bill read Colossians 1: 24-29. Christ is in us but we are also in Christ.
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