Christmas is coming!

It was last summer when CJ and I first began discussing what we would give our daughters for Christmas. Because our budget is much more limited than it used to be, we needed to start saving a few months in advance. But also, when you live on the other side of the world from where most of your gifts will come from, it takes longer to buy them and get them here.

Miá is a reader like her mommy. She is always reading something. At Miá's school, she can check out three books in the library each week, and she does. In fact, she’s read almost all the books they have for students her age-level. That’s one of the reasons why CJ and I decided to give Miá a Kindle for Christmas. When we mentioned the idea to her to see if it would be something she’d be interested in, she got so excited.

“Oh yes, Mommy, yes, yes YES! I would LOVE a Kindle,” she gushed.

The next question was, how do we get it here?

There is no postal service in this country and all our mail from America goes to an address in Bangkok where we pick up whenever we go there to renew our visas. Through a little research we discovered it wasn’t possible to buy a Kindle from Amazon and have it shipped internationally, so that wasn’t an option.

We could’ve probably bought one in Thailand or Malaysia and we discussed that. But we were worried that it might not be authentic. (Asian countries are known for their knock-offs.)

Then, when we learned that good friends Mickey and Beverly Webb would make a trip to visit us in November, we realized the great opportunity we would have to buy a Kindle on the internet and have it shipped to their house so they could bring it with them when they came.

How great is that!?!?

And that’s exactly what we did.

We ordered the Kindle and a cute case protector, had it shipped to our friends in America and the Webbs arrived here in our country with Mia’s new Kindle with no problems where I stored it away for safe-keeping until Christmas.

About a week before Christmas I began wrapping the packages to go under the tree. I decided before I wrapped up Mia’s Kindle that I should go ahead and set it up for her and download a few books so she’d be ready to play with it the moment she opened it.

That’s when I realized a problem.

The Kindle wouldn’t turn on.

I thought maybe it just needed to be charged up first, so I plugged it in while she was at school one day, only to discover several hours later that it still wouldn’t turn on.

Hmmm…. That’s not good.

I sent an email to Amazon asking what I need to do.

I was delighted to get such a fast response, until I read what it said. “You need to call our support center and speak with a customer service representative.”

Uh…. No can do. We have no international phone service here and even if we did, I’d hate to think of the cost of such a call.

After much research I discovered that I could have an online chat with a customer service rep; I just needed to get up in the middle of the night to do it so it would be during their hours of operation in America.

To make an already long story shorter, I’ll summarize what they told me: The Kindle we bought had a factory-defect, but if we would send it back to them, they would send us another brand new one at no charge.

Did I mention it was just a few days before Christmas? When I said (typed) as much to the customer service rep, she said, “Oh no problem. We’ll have a new one overnighted to you and you’ll have it tomorrow!” I could just imagine the chipper in her voice.

Did I mention I live in Myanmar?

Silence.

“Hello?” I typed.

“Oh.” That was literally her response.

I visualized Miá waking up on Christmas morning to find no presents under the tree and how devastated she would be. It broke my heart.

Amazon did what they said. They overnighted a new one to my parents’ house at no charge. They even gave us the label for free shipping to send the old one back to them… from America.

I would be responsible for getting the defective one back to America, but once in the country, it would be free return shipping to their factory.

Sheesh!

We have some friends living in this country who, thankfully, have relatives visiting this month, so we had my parents ship the new Kindle to them and they will bring it on the airplane with them here. Hopefully they will arrive this week and hopefully Miá will finally get her Christmas present.

The bad Kindle – they’ll take it back home with them when they go and will ship it from their house to the factory when they return.

Poor Miá, she cried when she realized on Christmas morning that “Santa” was unable to bring her Kindle. But when we told her that it would come in January, she began a countdown on the whiteboard in her bedroom – each day changing the number to how many days until her Christmas present would finally arrive.

This morning when she woke up, she ran to my bedroom and shouted, “Christmas is coming tomorrow!” She can hardly contain her excitement.

Please pray that everything goes well with this new device and that it arrives here safe and sound and working as it’s supposed to.

By the time all this is done, it will be time to start thinking about our daughters’ presents for next Christmas!