Since we've been reading "James and the Giant Peach", I brought in peaches (you can find them canned here) for the kids at the juvenile and blue house to try. It's funny watching them eat them b/c they're almost afraid to taste them at first. But they all liked them, and I think they enjoyed knowing they were tasting something American. We had them make up a rap/song about the peaches using as many adjectives as possible. it worked really well on monday, but when we did it today it was rather blah b/c they spent so much time laughing at each other and being embarrassed. i'm beginning to remember why i always struggled teaching junior high.
i forgot to mention that when i first saw the picture of baby joy i commented that "she looks a little muzungu" b/c her skin is very light. victor started cracking up and then informed me that that's how all african children start out at first. amie tells me you have to look at their ears to know how their skin will finally look in a few weeks. wow, i definitely needed to be educated. clearly i'm very ignorant about some things.
when i went to church on sunday, they had a really interesting part of the service where they prayed for all the nations of the earth. they passed out lots and lots of big flags of various countries that we held as we sang and we were supposed to pray specifically for that country. we were all a bit perplexed about what country we had...we never could decide if it was rwanda or cameroon, or even something else. clearly, another thing i need to educate myself about. in any case, it was a great picture of unity and made me think about how wonderful it will be to meet so many people from all over the world when i get to heaven.
and i didn't mention that wonderful tara, upon returning from uganda, brought me cookies, yes real cookies like snickerdoodles and peanut butter ones, that she made...they had an oven there! and she brought me skittles her friend brought over from america. so yeah, i've been feeling very american with the food this week. i spent a long time talking with her about the situation at blue house last night. i ran into 2 americans who are with a u.s. organization that sponsors blue house. so i shared with them some of the problems taking place there right now. they said, they'd had this problem before and that they would look into it. they also spoke with the teachers, and i noticed a big change today. amazingly, lots of the teachers seemed to be teaching. so i think they're hoping that this organization is going to help them if they do their job. i'm hoping too. tara is meeting with an organization back home who wants to sponsor the blue house and i think they want her to help on the ground. but i think she is reluctant to get involved with this mess. that's the problem people don't understand here...that once there's corruption and broken trust, americans are hesitant to get involved again. so continue to pray for this situation, that problems would be revealed, and corruption identified. we need to fix these problems so that kids can be fed, educated, and loved.
i felt like we finally had a break through with the class 8 kids at blue house today. matt and i decided to take a new approach to our english lessons. i know that they're actually not going to learn much english in the short time we're with them. so instead, i'm hoping they learn respect and to become people of God. so we had them read a Bible story, which was good practice reading. much of their writing skills are bad b/c the grammar that they speak with is atrocious. i've never seen them listening so intently. we talked about zaccheus and stealing. and i really tried to hammer home the point that theft is bad and doesn't solve problems and makes muzungus not want to help them. then we made books from the stories they wrote about themselves. they each got a copy and got to color them. they seemed to very much enjoy reading what everyone else wrote.
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