Day 5

God never ceases to amaze me. So many awesome things have taken place in the 3 days that we have been present in Ereri and the Tutu village. Today was the first of our work days at the school and when they say work, they mean work. Today has been both physically and emotionally exhausting. We started off on our our journey to Ereri and God was just really moving in my heart. It was awesome to sit and reflect on these days while listening to worship music and heading to go serve these people. We arrived at the school where hundreds of children were learning and many women and men were hard at work in the kitchen and the field. Our group was split into 3 teams. One to go into the school, one to help dig a trench and the last group were the pastors teaching a pastoral training class. Today, i was on the team working in the school and what a blessing it was. Our main topic for this week is trust and how we are to trust in God. Today's lesson was about Noah and the ark. I was placed with classes 1 and 2 (which would be like k4 and k5 in America) and we had about 80 students total. We taught our lesson showing pictures and telling the story, then proceeded to ask the children questions. Of course with the help of their teacher as our translator. The children were SO respectful and so well behaved. They listened very carefully and understood everything that we taught. After the story, we let the children color and then we taught them the song "Rise and shine and give god the glory glory..". After our tenth round of practicing the song, they stopped us and asked the teacher if they could sing for us. They sang us this:
           "I want to be like Jesus so deep down in my heart, I want to be like Jesus so deep down in my     heart, so deep deep so down down so deep down in my heart."

Seriously, it was so incredible to watch these kids sing to us. We ended with all singing the "Asante Sana Yesu" song once in English and once in Swahili. It is so moving to worship, in two languages, across the world with a completely different culture. When we returned for lunch, the kids were finishing up their lunch and we were able to spend the afternoon playing with them. There were times when i literally had a child hanging off every single one of my fingers. Annah and Esther stuck by my side ALL day long along and then one of the little boys i met the day before at our church service found me and held my hand all day! Brittany and I taught all the kids how to do the hokey-pokey, the chicken dance, and bananas unite chant. The kids loved our dances and taught us one of their own. They shake their hips back and forth and sing "Chiquita banana, chiquita banana.." over and over again. Later in the afternoon I met 4 of the older boys and we got to talking about what God's plan for me looks like and how im trying to be obedient to his calling. One of the boys was talking to me about his life and telling me how he wakes up everyday at 4 in the morning to walk to school! INSANE! i struggle with 8am's. I also was able to show them pictures of my family and introduce them to my friends. They all kept asking where is your dad and i told them that he had passed away. Well later that day, Esther pulled me to the side and told me "Baba yangu alipokufa." Her father had also passed away the week before we arrived in Kenya. This allowed me to really connect with her, I was able to share with her in swahili that we do not have earthly fathers but we do have a heavenly father who promises to take care of us and love us, but we have to trust in His plan for us. I have absolutely loved today. I cannot see what the Lord has in store for us in the next few days.