Our Host Mother - Our Hero!

7/21/12

Jambo!

Thursday started out as a pretty average day here in Etago.  We separated into our two teaching groups (Christiana and Matthew with the older children, and Gretchen and I with the younger children) and taught our lessons as usual.  After our lessons, though, while all the children were outside for recess, we prepared a surprise for them – toothbrushes. Lots and lots of toothbrushes. We got one ziplock bag for each grade, filled them with the appropriate number of toothbrushes, and gave them to the teachers to hand out to the children.  And the children loved them!  It wasn't hard to get the children to pose for a couple pictures. J

Friday was business as usual for team two.  We woke up, went to school, listened to the children sing for us, sang for the children, and then separated to teach our lessons to the separate age groups.  After lunch, we four teachers got together and taught the children (two or three standards at a time) how to make "God's Eyes" out of shish kabob sticks and yarn.  You can expect plenty of pictures of how those turned out later. J

Later that night, as the three of us girls were going back to our hut after supper, I happened to notice a rather large five-legged spider.  Christiana was, thankfully, willing to kill it (with my shoe, probably because it's the biggest), but our host mother seemed to think the whole ordeal was really funny, especially the part where Christiana wasn't sure if the spider was dead or not, and I jumped onto my bed, bruising my shin in the process.  Later, we spotted what appeared to be a huge wasp flying around our room.  Naturally, we all hide under the protection of the mosquito net on my bed.  I guess our host mother heard us screaming or something, because she came into our hut and started laughing when she saw us all sitting there, and we explained the situation.  She then laughed a little more and walked over to where the wasp was sitting and grabbed it by the wing and very casually showed us the wasp.  Needless to say, we all felt a little pathetic.  I guess we all need to be humbled every now and then.

This morning, our host told us that whatever that wasp-like thing was couldn't even sting us anyway.  Good to know, right?  Anyway, then we all packed into the car once again, this time to go to Kinuchi.  There, we taught the children our lessons that we had prepared for them and listened as they performed a few songs for us.  Halfway through our lessons, we gave the children little bags with black and white puzzles and crayons, and they spent probably twenty minutes assembling and coloring them.  Then we acted out the story of David and Goliath, which I think they really enjoyed, especially when Matthew had Christiana stand on a chair and he pulled up a little boy to show how ridiculous David must have looked.  Then, we gave out crocheted crosses to all the women in the congregation, courtesy of the women of the local CLC congregations (thanks, everyone!).

As always, any prayers for our efforts here in East Africa would really be appreciated.  So far, the Lord has blessed us with safety and good health, and we thank Him for that.  Also, please continue to pray for the church here in Etago.  I really can't stress enough how bad of shape it's in.

Bwana asifiwe!

~ Jennifer