These boots...

Ben has by far the best style of all children. I know you are saying "Michael, their clothes are primarily donated to them, they wear what they have!" I agree, but he has a couple of pairs of shoes...the boots were his choice, and his choice alone! The next day he wore the same thing plus a yellow down vest. The boy has style!

The has been pretty great. We have been left alone with kids quite a bit and, I believe, it's been fruitful. The kids are really starting to like us! Thank God!

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Tammi Time:
The week of 8/26/06 – 9/1/06

Sorry to all the fans of the every night journal entries, I did not do so well this week, maybe next week. The week in general has been one of the best and one of the worst. I will start with the hard part first because well, it is short and the amazing moments far surpass all the hard junk.
Everything was going pretty good, or so we thought, until Thursday. I am not sure of how much to say or not to say. I think for the first time in my life I am feeling like I might not meet some ones expectations, or many people’s expectations for that matter. I mean my whole life I have done well for myself. I have worked hard to be where I am today. I feel, if I maybe so bold to say, I am a hard worker, I am trust worthy and, well, Michael and I make a great team, we are not afraid to say how we feel and confess when we are having hard times. All this to say, when all that is questioned or we feel like we are not meeting expectations, we get upset and start to struggle when we were just getting on track. I know everyone means well but really, we did a lot to be here and I repeat A LOT. We felt the calling from God and He gave us compassion for these children way before the picture of House of Hope was painted for us. Everyday we take into account the children’s background and everyday we think about how far they have come to be here and to be alive. They have met our expectations. Ok well enough of that, this all sounds like a rant, when in fact I think it all comes down to communicating and we are hoping all the parties involved, including us, get better at it.

So I will now move on to all the great moments!
The week has been much better then we could have imaged. We went in it thinking this is going to be a crazy and hard week, but in fact it was very nice and peaceful. All but two teachers were off this week, so that meant we had to take over and help lead a group of 11 a day. Margaret had a talk about us to the children and the next day they were all listening and respecting us a lot better. It was a huge blessing that I know played the largest role in this being a good week.
So now is a run down of something nice for every day of the week:

Saturday 8/26
After a hard day of being in town longer then we would have liked we came home to find all the kids sitting around a pit roasting corn, eating and looking at the stars. A few of the boys that had worked on the solar system project started to ask us more questions. We think we were able to point out Mars (brightest star in the sty). We ate lots of roasted corn and had a good time of laughing and enjoying our time with the kids.

Sunday 8/27
Going for a walk with a group of kids (and some other adults) to the camel farm that is off in the distance here at the house. Michael stayed at the house and watched a movie with the other group. I thought that the farm is bound to have a fence around it but nope, we all got super close to the huge camels. They were very old looking but still very neat to say the least. We walked for a while and the kids were having a great time exploring. They kept saying they wanted to find a mtoto (baby) camel. We looked for quite a while but to no avail, I guess they keep them somewhere else.

Monday 8/28/06
Teaching sewing for the first time in my life and it going well, and the kids making pillows and dolls and cloths for the dolls. On the way home we saw a girl put the doll on her back, I could not stop smiling.

Tuesday 8/29/06
Michael and I sat outside and washed our close with all the other girls. Michael said that the boys were never going to listen to him again but I said you have strong hands and can wring out the cloths much better then me.

Wednesday 8/30/06
Helping Ken sew a nice doll and pillow, he is such a ladies man.
Having Nicholas take a nap on me.
Having Lois speak to Michael in Kiswahili and Michael saying “oh Lois you know I don’t speak Spanish” (an Anchor Man joke)

Thursday 8/31/06
Having Ben arrive at school with a pink shirt and cut off shorts and you guessed it cowboy boots on! (Be sure to check out the photo)
Roy (the name of the boy calf here), who gets feed by humans, was getting hungry so he was running around and mooing like crazy, he tried to suck a mans elbow! Way cute!
Getting KISSES for the first time from Lois, and it was not just one kiss, it was too many to count it was a little weird but really really nice, all the other boys were watching and laughing, but she did not care she just grabbed both my cheeks and went in for it, on the lip kisses! Too sweet, she was being a cutie pie all night. We are both growing very fond of her. (She is the little girl in the video with Michael).
During prayer time we were learning about Noah and Margaret asked if anyone wanted to share what they knew about Noah so a few spoke up but Ben’s stuck out the most because he put the story of Lot and the story of Noah together and it made for something amazingly funny that lasted a good while until Margaret said are you telling about Lot or about Noah and Ben said “Lot”. What made Michael and I both laugh the hardest was Ben said something about Lot or Noah, who knows, going to drink a soda before going home to his family. Ben is one funny boy!

Friday 9/1/06
Watching The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe with all the children and having them all cheer when Aslan came back from being dead. Also having Caroline get upset that we could not keep sewing, she asked if we could do it on Saturday.
After fellowship time, Michael went into the living room where the boys had decided to stay up late watching Narnia again, and he found that the main menu was on the screen and the boys asked him really nicely “can you play the last thing”, Michael said “what thing” and they said “snake picks” and he realized after much confusion that they were asking to play “sneak peeks” , he went ahead and played it for them knowing that they would be a little disappointed. All we could think of was, I wonder how long it took them to read that and come up with “snake picks”. Oh and when I asked “who asked you to play it”, he said, you guessed it, Ben and Peter.

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And now a video of Tammi in the kitchen: