A New Beginning

January 29-Nine days into this new life.  Already it feels like home, except that it is warm, both in spirit and in  climate.  Friday, the 28th, The Staff and children of LAMB gave Valerie Fowler, the American teacher and head of the school at the Children's Home, a rousing and touching send off.  The children sang songs and performed their own choreographed routines to the music.  They even performed incredibly complicated pyramid formations.  This was on a concrete floor with no mats or safety aids, and standing on each other's backs, shoulders, or balancing on each other.  The way each child helped the others was heart warming. Even the tiny toddlers stood around being adorable while "singing" a song.  Everyone so enjoyed the food and cake that followed.  I got to hold Yolani (the beautiful baby that happens to be blind) and we played pat-a-cake, and a few other finger plays.  Many of the older children compete for the chance to hold her or carry her around.
Amanda's new job is help get the new CASA LAMB started up and comfortably inviting to the various teams that come down to work.  We have been shopping nearly non stop for the many things the house needs.  If you know Amanda, you know what a shopping queen she is.  It has been amazing to go into everything from super sophisticated malls, a la US,  to the crowded Mercado where stalls and vendors are set up on the street and the prices were absolutely bargain basement.
At school, registration for the children took place last week and the search for teachers goes on.  We are still several short, so the full workshop that I will be doing will happen next week-Feb 7th.  This coming week I will be helping to get the preschool and kindergarten classrooms set up.  I will help arrange and set the  furnishes of those rooms.  Any leftover (?) time will be either shopping with Amanda (surprize, surprize) or working here at CASA LAMB to get it ready for the first team in February.
To see the love and experience the joy of doing some fulfilling work here is my deep, deep pleasure.  Imagine children in circumstances so impoverished there is no hope for a bright future.  Then comes the  opportunity to go to a Christian school where they are safe, cherished, fed spiritually and literally, and given the tools of learning that may help unlock a better future.  To be a part of this mission of hope
is why I came here.  Thanks be to God for this gift.