My 2nd Fancy Fancy

Tonight we had a fancy fancy, it was my second one here and it actually went really well. W kept the same general format as last time so it was a lot less hectic and I think we will keep running more and more like a well oiled machine. It began with us playing some other crazy games like I've been doing.

This time the games we played were extreme hot potato and toe bobbing. Extreme hot potato consisted of them passing two balls back and forth and then when the music stopped whoever was holding the ball had a choice to either eat a cookie for one point, two green olives for five points, or a sardine in tomato sauce for thirty. It was disgusting and awesome! And we totally had a girl throw up...I know I'm a terrible person for taking joy in that, but you can thank years of youth ministry for that. Then with toe bobbing we had four bowls of oil and then some crackers and these four big guys who volunteered to play had to use their feet to take the crackers out of the bowl. It was fantastic!

I also had my first big time teaching experience, I taught on Jeremiah 1:4-8 and I think it went ok, I have a lot to learn still, but that's to be expected. All in all, it seemed to go pretty well.

5 months

Wow! Ok it's now been five months and there seems to be such a big difference between 4 months and five months (other than 30 days). It's like the difference between a kid turning 14 and then when they turn 15, 14 - they're still kind of seen as a kid, but 15...watch out. God has blessed me with some awesome friends here already; soon I'll be moving into my very own little apartment, it will still be on the compound, but it will be my very own that I get to decorate and everything!; I have also gotten to the point where I can drive here. It's kind of one of those things where I feel like I could sing "Mommy wow! I'm a big kid now!" I'm now about 1/4 of the way through my commitment and I can't wait to see what else God is going to do!

Wednesday night teaching

Here's a picture of Jess teaching to kind of show you what it all looks like. So now between the worship video and this you maybe are getting a good idea of how we kind of roll for service.

worship

I finally was a good girl and tried to capture worship here, this is Wednesday night service so there's not as many people as Sundays, but there was just something about tonight that it sounded so cool.

Life goes on

These past couple of days I'm realizing that I shouldn't be surprised that life continues back home even though I am gone. Ministry moves on, people get married, friends have babies, friends go through difficult times and I'm not able to be there for them. It kills me to not be able to be there, but through it all, God continues to show me that this is still where He wants me. It's funny though, there's not a whole lot that can prepare you for this feeling of missing out on the life you were so accustomed to being a part of.

Silent night

Right now I'm absolutely loving how this night is working out. I'm sitting in our living room, Jess is working on our broken projector, Ryan's working on his newsletter, Bev's working on her teaching for tomorrow, Ryan has Jon Foreman playing, I'm drinking tea, working on outlines, and chatting with my momma and brother and it's just a nice peaceful night. We don't get many of these and so it's cool that we're all being productive but in a relaxing way and I don't know it's just a cool night.

Sad Only in Africa Moment

Ok, I realize this is a sad entry, but I want to give you an idea of how children can be treated here. So this morning there was a little girl who was 2 1/2 years old who was dropped off at the front of the church by a boda (a bike taxi) and the boda driver just said he had been paid to take the little girl and drop her off for us to take care of. The little girl had to have a colostomy put in, but they failed to put a bad there...so you can only imagine what the poor thing had to go through. JB and Lillian took her to the hospital but they wouldn't take her, and called around and finally they found an orphanage that would take her. It's crazy to think that people just abandon their kids (2 1/2 years old!) because they're not "perfect" or hard to take care of. I know I'm probably totally oblivious and situations like that probably take place in America too, but it just really blew my mind to think about.