Week in Review

Joshua, one of Steph's favorite babies!

Christy and her favorite baby, Yasini!

Our first full week at Cradle of Love is now behind us. I'm not going to lie the first few days dragged on and I was beginning to think wow 3 months here may be a bit too long. How will we ever fill the days. Well fill the days we did. Monday was our first official work day. The typical shifts are from 9-1:30 3-5 and 5-7. I have personally fallen in love with the 5-7 shift as we feed the babies/big kids dinner and then help the nannies get them ready for bed. For the older kids that includes a bath. I use the word bath loosely as it's more of a fast rinse with anti- bacterial soap. eeek one things for sure there is no time for bath toys! All the kids are then changed into Pj's. I've always thought that Pj's were cute but here it is especially cute as all pj's work for any kid. This was confusing to some at first as many of the girls also have their heads shaved (due to ringworm) so when we would see them in Thomas the tank footie pj's it was wrong to assume they were males.. oops! The other adorable thing is that the one year olds and the almost three year olds also share pj's. Swimming on one while snug as possible on the other. Who knew you could get so much wear out of something. (We hope to post photos soon) After the Pj's are on then it's time for snack- (anything from cucumbers to toast). After that we try to wrangle a few kids and read books. I wish they had a better selection, but some are too young to know what the words say anyways so you can get creative. Around 7 it starts getting dark and since we can't be out after dark we go up to the apartment and cook dinner. This has been quit the learning experience as well- lets be honest all of our cooking leaves much to be desired- we are trying to learn from our non American roommates as they seem to have the skills we are lacking. Okay back to the week.

Tuesday we went to the market and worked the 9-130 and 5-7 shift (see previous post). On Wednesday all 4 of us took the day off and went to Alexis and Jacqui's house. Alexis and Jacqui are the Arusha YL leaders that we had the pleasure of working with last year. They are awesome! We went over and were there in time to enjoy a little bit of their leadership time with the other Young Life staff and volunteers. Leadership was in Swahili so there wasn't much that we understood, but we could tell when they were becoming really passionate about something. Afterwards we all prayed together! Afterwards we stayed and hung out for a bit and then enjoyed a lunch of rice, beans and grilled bananas. Yummy. The rest of the afternoon we spent at a shop in town enjoying gelato and coffee outside - aww the many perks of Africa.

Thursday and Friday was back to being dedicated solely to the kids. Hallie brought stickers from the states and those were a hug hit with the kids. We are still finding them on random shoes ;) Saturday night we went out with our roommate Nike to a burger and shakes join in the city. The shakes were amazing. Sunday we took off for Church and went to Vineyard. It meets at a restaurant under a thatched roof. It was awesome - Okay i best be getting back to work, but more to come about Church and the fun friends that we meet.

We hope that all is well at home and want you all to know that we love you and thank you so much for the love and support that you have shown us. Also thank you for your prayers - There is POWER in his Holy name and we are so blessed to have so many people calling out to him on our behalf. Believe it or not we have wireless in the apt and while the connection is SLOW we both get to regularly check our emails and would love to be up to date with your lives as well.

busu busu (kiss kiss)
Christy