The first morning in Africa, we were up and ready early to leave for school. About 10-12 of us packed into the little Noah to head to Lifesong. It was always a tight ride, but very cozy. :)
The kids at Lifesong start out every morning in rows of their grades and sing. This is one of my favorite parts. Lucy, the principal of the school, dances around and sings with all of her heart. It is very refreshing to watch—there is no holding back. All of the kids sing and clap and dance… the sound is amazing, and I can’t help but think that someday, that is what Heaven will be like.
On this particular day, the Lifesong kids were going next door to the neighboring school to compete in a sports day. We were there all morning with them, cheering them all as they ran races, played football (soccer), and netball (similar to basketball).
A lot of the American team members had bought soccer jerseys so they wore them on this day. It was fun to be a part of this special event. Whenever the LS kids would score a goal in soccer, all the kids would cheer and literally flood the field in celebration.
We ate lunch, and then it was time for VBS. Joe, Justin, and Sheila were in charge and did a great job with their skit and lesson. The craft was a Jesus bracelet with beads that tells the story of salvation.
This year, we worked on a work project in the afternoons or during free time. David had us do some painting on the new building, which houses an awesome computer lab and some other classrooms. He also had the boys construct some pillars for the new building to make it aesthetically pleasing to the eye. His goal is to present nice structure and aesthetics as much as possible to the kids. Since they are so used to seeing poor constructions and “good building” is not something they see as much as we do in America, he thought it would be a nice touch.
To complete the project, the boys measured and cut the wood, and some of us girls sanded it down and painted a special paint on it. Other girls worked on chiseling out concrete blocks for the base. It was quite the job! Right at first, all of us were working on it and tools were limited, so we used anything from axes to hammers.
Some of us girls worked on dinner that night—it was a bean-vegetable-hamburger concoction with noodles and garlic bread. We enjoyed that and then Justin had the devotions on the Fruits of the Spirit. He started out by praying the Lord’s prayer; it was neat to hear it prayed out in a serious fashion rather than just skimmed over or read.
We hung out for awhile, and then most of the team traveled back to Plot 1 for the evening. This was the night that my Whitney, Kailey, Heather and I would move over to the bigger guest house to make more room for everyone. As we did, some of the girls came over to help us with our luggage. They were looking around the house and checking it out since it is so nice, and suddenly we hear a scream from one of the bedrooms. We rushed in and saw Kaylin pointing at the wall. There was a lizard and she was completely terrified.
KaraLea, ever the brave soul, waltzed over and grabbed it, sticking it in Kaylin’s face. Kaylin was not a fan and grabbed Heather and started to run out of the bedroom, and as she did so KaraLea came in for another tease… Kaylin freaked out, tripped, and took Heather down onto the floor. It was very amusing. Let’s just say there was a lot of screaming and laughing, so much so that the couple that lives on the property came over to check on us.
The boys ended up coming over to hang out for awhile, and we watched some of the first team’s bungee jumping videos. They were pretty entertaining!
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