Sunday @ the Home

I'm in an internet cafe right now, so I'm going to try and catch up a bit on some posts...I'll do different ones for different days...

Last Sunday afternoon, we went back to the orphanage (we call it "the Home") run by the organization I'm with. We were all very excited because the children are so wonderful and there are only 12 so we can get to know each child. Shafiga was her usual rambunctious self--chasing me with grasshoppers and putting them in our shoes. I also played badminton with Henry. I had a couple mosquitoes land on me, but thankfully no bites! Then we all had a snack of popcorn, watermelon, pineapple, poundcake, and soda. No wonder they love it when the Americans come to visit! So we're all sitting at the table eating our snack, and I noticed that Shafiga would not take her eyes off of me. I just kinda ignored it and kept eating. Well, I started to notice that she was copying EVERYTHING I was doing. When I'd put popcorn in my mouth, she'd put popcorn in her mouth. I started to eat some fruit and she didn't have any fruit left on her plate, so she gave me this look like "No fair! what are you doing?!" She was really good! Everyone started watching, and we were trying to hold in our laughter but it was so cute. She kept a straight face the whole time, and she started to just pretend if I was eating something she didn't have on her plate. What a crack up! I already know I'm going to have a super hard time leaving her.

After snack, the kids sang and danced to some worship songs for us. Then they did their usual night prayer routine. They sit down and sing a couple more songs, a couple children read a Bible story, they recite words or phrases they remember from the story, and then they share what the story means. To close, they pray together. One of the mamas (the women who take care of them) said, "Who wants to pray?" At least 5 of their hands shot up...now remember only 12 children live there. Typically in my life experiences, only 1 (or 0!) person volunteers to pray. That was really inspiring to me to see nearly half of these children eager to pray. So the Mama let all the kids who raised their hands pray, and pray they did! I was shocked by the maturity of these 7-9 year old kids' prayers. They love God so much, and they are so grateful to have Him in their lives. This was a very powerful way to end the night...