Day 5 - July 19 - Monday

(Note: all pictures of the church, the people, and the kids mentioned here can be found at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=194523&id=630849426&l=fa566c2eb8)

Hurrah for children! Not only did they get me out of gardening (setting up a garden for the church was part of our goal, besides doing VBS - but we split up the team so Mrs. Mays, Dana, Kyle and I are doing VBS and the other four are working the dirt), but they also provided a great deal of entertainment and joy.The morning started out with about ten preschoolers, and by lunchtime we had twenty-two. We told them the story of Joseph and how God chose him (our memory verse is John 15:16a), taught them Duck Duck Goose, blew bubbles outside, and made a failed attempt at teaching them "Jesus Loves Me". After lunch they were gently nudged out to make way for what turned into eighteen first and second graders. We only had about an hour with them, so we just told them the story, gave them the verse, and played Extreme Duck Duck Goose (i.e. the same game, but outside because there were more of them - and the only place to play outside was on a slope). At three they switched out with a small bunch of seven to fourteen year olds that grew to a group of sixty-one by the end of the hour.
Highlights of the day... Watching Kyle play Joseph (he's a theater kid) and acting as Joseph's sheep and later his brothers. Using bubble wands with little kids who had NEVER seen bubbles before - including one little preschooler who kept a completely straight face until a bubble came anywhere near her, at which point she would bounce up and down and hyperventilate with a huge grin until the bubble popped; then it was back to blank. Watching five year old Welile (Way LEE lay) dance to music coming from our combi (the bus we took to and from the church every day) as we were about to leave. Having a really awesome guy named Loch (spelling?) as our translator. Talking to a Swazi woman named Cindi (spelling?) and watching her light up when I told her that that was my mom's name too (and after finding out that my mom was still in America instead of in Swaziland with me, she said that when I went back I could tell Mom that "second Cindi is in Swaziland").
Our gardeners had a good day too - around twenty people from the community came out to help them. This included one man who had fallen partway in front of a bus and had to have his hand amputated. One-handed, he was better with a hoe than many of the people on our team with two good hands!
Reality check moments - At lunchtime, the church fed the children some rice and what seemed to be a sort of cabbage mush. Pete told us that this is the only meal that most of these kids will get in a day; a lot of the preschoolers come to school at the church just for the food. When we drove back from dinner tonight (we actually eat dinner at the Royal Swazi, the sister hotel of the Lugogo Sun, because its dining room is the only one big enough to hold all 350 of us at once), we passed a place where one of the women riding in the combi said that one on-fire-for-Jesus widow lived and sold handicrafts. The hut was about the size of most people's living rooms, and it was made from mud, rocks, sticks, and a couple of panels of corrugated aluminum.
Fun fact of the day - yesterday at Project Canaan I met a woman named Candice Nolan, who instantly told me how much I reminded her of her niece. Throughout our conversations during the day, she kept mentioning how little gestures I made or things I said were exactly like her niece, and how she couldn't wait for her husband Mann to meet me when he flew in later that afternoon! Later that evening, I actually met Mann through Dana, although Candice wasn't around at the time. This morning I ate breakfast with her, and she told me than Mann asked her last night, "Did you see that girl who looks just like your niece?" You know what's ironic? Candice's niece is named Miranda. That's my sister's name. Oh, and Miranda's sisters are named Marie and Bethany - Marie is my middle name, and Bethany is my "little sister"'s name. I love God's amazing sense of humor! :)