Last Saturday

Last Saturday, my friends Marie and Heather and I went to a local village to volunteer at a church. One of the cleaning guys at our school volunteers with these children every week in his village; usually 50-80 children come, and he's the only adult who supervises and plays with them. We were excited for the opportunity to love on these kids so we went with some construction paper, crayons, and stickers and did what we could to show them God's love...

They LOVED the coloring and the stickers.

We read and talked about Noah's Ark and God's promise through the rainbow. With the help of some translation, we emphasized "Mungu ameahidi kuwa nasi daima!" (God always keeps His promises!) and that His promises are given to us in the Bible, the most important of which is His LOVE for us. And "Yesu anakupenda" = Jesus loves you.... the 2 most important words I've learned in Swahili so far!


Marie reading about Noah's Ark to them. It turns out that a majority of the kids are from Muslim families, but they come to this church each weekend because of the love and attention that they receive. So glad that they, too, get to hear about Christ's love!

When we came out of the church afterward, some of the kids had decorated our Bajaj driver's Bajaj with dog and cat stickers all around it.... Haha, he now has the best-looking and most decorated Bajaj in Dar. It was super cute that he actually loved the new additions and kept them all on. :) It's so great how far stickers can go in this place!! Even with adults! (stickers are a GREAT idea for care packages, by the way)

As we were leaving, one of the little boys started holding my hand as we walked through the village, and he took my hand up to his mouth and kissed it 3 different times.... So sweet. :)

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This afternoon I also went with some of our middle school students out to a local underprivileged school (for our "Service Learning" emphasis). We had a similar time coloring with them, and it just fills my heart with such joy seeing the joy that such a simple act brings to them! Our message today at the school was that they are unique and special creations of God, so we therefore had them draw and decorate their names to celebrate the unique creation that they are. More pics to come soon!