Intern Fun....

The interns have been here for almost two weeks now. Our interns are: Nate, Andrew, Ina (ee-na) and Lauren S. They are a pretty cool bunch. It’s great to go from moments of serious, in-depth talks to moments of uncontrollable laughter. We’ve become a very tight, united family; I really appreciate it.

On Tuesday, we went to Graceway Academy. It’s a free pre-school for children who live in the slums of Tuwaini (two-wa-nee). It’s funded by our friends Africa Connect, from the US. In Kenya, Early Childhood Development (ECD) classes, such as nursery, junior kindergarten and senior kindergarten are not covered by the government. Therefore, this makes grade one a huge challenge for them, most of them not even attending school without the ECD classes under their belt. This school gives the children the foundation and opportunity to carry on to grade one and through primary school.

In the morning, I was thinking of what we could do at Graceway. After girl’s cell time, I suggest we make crafts with the children, remembering that we had a big bin filled with stuff. So Lauren R and I went through the bins and found stickers, glitter glue, crayons, pencils, sticker boards, etc. So we got together a bunch of stuff and took it to Graceway with us.

The children were outside on the school property playing when we arrived and when they saw us, they started SCREAMING. They were so excited; they came running out of the gate and bombarded us all. We each had about 20 plus children around us each; fighting to hold our hands, give us hugs or just to touch our arms.

Lauren and I got the crafts all ready as everyone played with the children. After getting the children settled back in their classrooms, I took the team to each of the rooms and introduced the team to them. Then we split up in to groups and helped the children with the crafts. We made little bookmarks for them, full of stickers and glitter glue. By the end of the hour and half, there was just as much glitter on the children’s faces as there was on their stickers. Success!!!! :-)

When we were getting ready to leave, one of the little girls came over to me, grabbed my hand and in Swahili said, “Mary, are you coming tomorrow?” I said, “No, I’m sorry. We can’t come tomorrow.” She looked sad and then said, “When?” I told her, “We’ll come again soon!” She got all excited, hugged my waist and said, “Thank you for coming today.”

We, the team, all left there having so much fun. Helping these children make crafts, doing little games with them in the playground, spending time on the ground with them, hugging them…such small things that a made a huge difference in the children that day. We got just as much out of it as they did….we all benefited from it.

On Wednesday, we introduced the team to our girls, our EX-street girls. We played volleyball with them for awhile, which was quite fun and funny. :-) Later, I had Lillian sitting beside me reading from her English book to me. I looked up at her in amazement. She was trying, really trying.

Lillian had been one of the original girls in our home when it opened. She ran away when the others did. About a month ago, she found Anne, our social worker and pleaded to come back. We prayed about and talked about it and decided that we would give her another try. She’s been there for almost a month now and the transformation in her is incredible. With a different group of girls in the home now, rather then her close friends from the street that she was originally with, she’s a totally different person. She’s quite, humble, respectful and determined. We set strict guidelines on her due to this being her second chance in the home and she’s abided by each one. The first week she was there, she apologized to Daniel, Anne and I for running away. She said that she was so sorry and that she won’t be doing it again. She wanted to stay in the home and get her life straightened out.

And as I watched her on Wednesday, playing volleyball, helping me read a Swahili text book and my helping her read an English text book, I asked God, I begged God to please have her stay, to please make it work this time. This project is my heart; these girls have my heart. It’s the motherly love and protection I feel.

Anyway, that's all for now.