July 31st

Today was another good day! I love the orphan village

I started painting a little this morning, but I really didn’t do too much before it was time to go teach the teachers (haha, that sounds so impressive, doesn’t it). The computer lab is up, so I was to help the teachers learn to use a computer. I helped Eunice. She is a very sweet lady with the best smile ever. We went over the mouse, word processing tools, and typing lessons using a children’s typing program. It was fun.

After that, the painting was finished So, the rest of the day, from about 1 on, I was able to just hang out with the kids. I started out with Resty. I gave her a little bag of goodies that I had gathered for her, and she was very thankful. We played skip bo for a while. While I ate lunch, they took good care of my camera for me, taking many, many photos.

Then, I headed to find Nelson. He was playing soccer/football, and when he saw me, he waved and left the field to hug me and say hello. I told him that he didn’t have to stop playing, but he said that he wanted to spend time with me. So, I offered to play with him if he would teach me some tricks. We kicked the ball around. I got relatively good at that part until we started to try to juggle. Um, Tasha can’t juggle. Glad we got that cleared up. He asked me to take photos of him playing, so that was fun to see him show off some tricks, although I am a horrible photographer with a point and click, so I don’t think I really caught any of the cool things on camera. His very good friend is Noah, who is newly sponsored by Tracy Houston and family. I took them down to see the J. Houston Homes, and I explained about how the family gave for this house. He thought that was very cool. We then went to Nelson’s house, the McClyntire house. There, we took about a million photos, and finally started playing cards. We played some mad slap jack, and I had about a million kids slapping in with me. It was a lot of fun! When I got the call that it was time to go, I made my way to the front of the village. Of course, no one was ready to go, as usual, so we started a Skip-Bo game on the front porch. It was fun, but slap jack was just better suited for a place with 900 kids all wanting to play for a little bit then move on.

It was so much fun playing cards with Nelson. He is such a genuine character with a great smile, but I have noticed that he doesn’t smile all that much otherwise, so I am glad that I can bring that to him. Even though he hasn’t really asked for anything, I got him a bookbag full of goodies as well. His face lit up! I love this feeling! I could spend all my money here. (yet, really a backpack full of goodies only cost about $8 USD).

We walked home again today, and I passed out candy to my die hard fans.

I am very excited for tomorrow (with one exception). We will go to worship tomorrow in the village and sing with the kids. Then, this is the bad part, the whole team is going to leave me. We have team members flying out, and everyone but me is seeing them off (Pastor Jackson wants me to be there today for a special event!). I will stay for the BIRTHDAY PARTY!!!!! YAY!! I am so excited!! Now I feel like I need to go shopping again…