TIA (this is africa)

A&J reporting from Arusha,

Just to reassure everyone, teaching for the first time didn't kill us, in fact, it was a great experience! The children at the first congregation were very excited to see us and very involved in our lessons.  There were about 15 kids all from Pastor Jermiah's congregation.  It was refreshing to see how eager the children were to hear God's word, it made our job a lot easier.  Randy started the lessons talking about creation and the fall into sin, (without notes of course) then Lucas took over and talked about Noah, the flood, and the tower of babel and then I (A) came in to tell them about their loving savior.  After my lesson, we taught the children Jesus loves me, with hand motions that they loved it.  Finally, I (J) talked about Jesus death and resurrection that saves us from our sins.  Then we sang another song, here is the cross, that had hand motions also.  They were able to sing along for the majority of it. It was awesome to sing praises to God with children so different than us, but having the love of Christ in common.  After Pastor finished up the lessons, we sang if your happy and you know it and gave them their crafts and gifts! They are so appreciative of everything we taught and gave them and of course because they all have such great hospitality, the adults took us back to Jeremiah's home.  We walked with the children through the beautiful, luscious land that had many banana trees and coffee trees.  All the children were so amazed at our cameras so they took them and took lots of pictures of us and each other. Once we arrived, we had a wonderful supper of delicious tea, fresh bananas, and about a loaf of bread each  (especially for Lucas).  Then Jeremiah's son, Elisha and his wife, Lina joined us for the night.  They took our team and Ibrahim, our translator, to a Nick's restaurant to try their huge Tilapia fish, chicken and chips.  We all enjoyed everyone's company the whole day but we were very tired by the time we went back to our hotel.  Once Elisha and Lina dropped us off we all headed for bed pretty quickly to rest up for today's journey to the Maasai Tribe.  We are excited for all the other opportunities we will have on this trip!

A&J