Christmas in Thailand

This past Wednesday evening we had a combined fellowship (we usually meet every Wednesday with our fellowship group for prayer, praise and Bible study. This fellowship group is made up of mostly LLC students and mostly westerners but there are some Asian nations represented as well.)
Anyway, everyone brought a dessert dish that is common at their Christmas feast from their respected country. I made snickerdoodles. Though my mom didn't make snickerdoodles EVERY year she did make them occassionally. I really made them for Paul because it is his favorite cookie and yes, Mom Henry makes them EVERY year, (I think). So, it was fun to bless my husband but also share this yummy cookie with our friends here as well. So, some of the desserts that showed up were pumpkin bread (VERY good!), sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies, brownies, pumpkin soup, a dish from Holland (that I don't know how to spell or say!), wassail, and a tea/coffee drink common in Hong Kong. It was a lot of fun. We sang Christmas carols and drank wassail and then had a white elephant gift exchange. Now, you probably wouldn't DARE to have a white elephant gift exchange with Thai folks because the white elephants here are SO respected but we attempted to do it even with the internatinal mix of folks studying at LLC. (We have folks from the USA, Canada, Mongolia, China, Malaysia, Holland, the UK, New Zealand and I think I got them all, so even though we are all Christians our customs can still be very different.) It was a lot of fun and there were some pretty nice gifts received. However, we learned a very important lesson that night about Asian verses Western culture. One of the couples from an Asian country didn't fully undestand the concept of a white elephant gift exchange. And so they bought nice gifts and were shocked when (it happened to be Paul and I) were trying to encourage others to take the gift we got. Mind you, we liked the gift, we were just having some fun...you know how it goes! We didn't realize we were offending them and they didn't understand the idea of the white elephant gift exchange. Needless to say, we found out that this couple was upset...and then we felt TERRIBLE. What to do? Well, I went to the couple and told them that we were sorry, that we really liked the gift (and also by this time some other missionaries had explained the idea of a white elephant in a bit more detail so they understood the cultural differences a little better too). I still feel badly about it. It's so easy to forget that other cultures do things different...especially when almost everyone around you is from a very similar culture. We also learned from this couple that even taking the time to unwrap the gift is very important to them and to several other Asian cultures it turns out...and here we were (all the Westerners) ripping into the gifts and throwing the paper on the ground, etc. How offensive we must have seemed and yet none of us thought twice about it. Well, I don't want to labor on about this but thought it was an interesting culture point to share with you all and also to let you know that we once again were humbled the other night. Please keep praying for us!