Another Friday Excursion

This past Friday we surprised 4 of the younger girls with an outing. Our kids have a behavior level system. If you are on a good level - you get to have privileges like the ability to go on surprise excursions.

We would love to be able to take all of them out for a fun afternoon during the break, but with 50 kids, the odds of them all being on a good enough level to go it not likely.

Anyway - on to the really fun stuff! Iris, Angie, Emily, and Sheila were on a great level so on Friday we went to a food court for lunch and then headed on to the Children's Museum. They loved that they got to share a pizza together and go through the museum with very few other people. We were surprised by how great and interactive it was. In addition to the information, they had activities that went along with each station.

At the end of the museum was a huge ball room. There were thousands of those small balls that are in play places like chuck-e-cheese, but instead of a huge vat of balls, there were pulley systems and other ways to collect the balls. Much like some water parks that have a huge bucket of water that spills periodically, instead of water, lots of balls fell at the sound of the alarm.

Here are a few pics from our day out:

Here Iris is learning all about static electricity.


Though we didn't see any reason to have a bubble area, we all loved making giant bubbles.


Lee is showing them how exactly to remove the "charlie horse" in the life size operation game.


After all of our hard work, the balls came raining down.


Taking a little rest at the end of our afternoon.

We hope that you all have a great Thanksgiving. We're looking forward to all of the traditional Thanksgiving foods with fellow missionaries from the states tomorrow.

Surprise Excursion!!

We've mentioned before that our kids are out of school for the equivalent of "summer break". This past Friday we surprised the little boys who are on good behavior level with an outing.

We had planned the outing, and clued in all of those who needed to know ahead of time. Our plan was to leave about 11:30, make our way to McDonald's for a happy meal lunch, and then head on to the zoo.

At 11:30 we pulled the van in front of the boys house, the 10 eligible kiddos ran outside, excited for what was to come. We told them that because of their great behavior level, there was a reward in store. So just before loading the van, the announcement of a McDonald's lunch was announced, followed by cheers. Here are a couple of pics from McDonald's :



The next part of the story is best with a little background information. The little boys are... little boys. Meal times can be really messy, loud, and sort of out of control. In the past few weeks the house parents have been talking to them about how they are animals. This was no reason for our choice of taking them to the zoo, but it lead to some teachable moments.

After eating Lee rounded up all of the kiddos and said that he had been talking to their houseparent who said that they needed to learn the difference between being animals and humans. Therefore we were going to go to the zoo to learn the difference. This announcement was also followed by cheers. Here are a few pics from the zoo:

This is just inside the gates at the zoo. The couple on the left, Edon & Dixon are here visiting the home for a couple of weeks. We have enjoyed spending time with them, and they were great help on Friday.

"Everybody be a flamingo" You can faintly see a couple of flamingo's in the background on the left.

Of all animals, most of the kids wants their picture taken with Camila, the donkey. I think she was getting a little agitated, so she decided to snack on Javier's shirt for this picture.

Christmas Cards

Yeah, we know, talking about Christmas cards in early November may be a stretch, but we're almost finished with them here. Let us clarify, the kids are almost finished with their Christmas cards.

Each of our kids have to write a homemade Christmas card to each of the sponsors each year. It's almost like a dance that begins in late summer and by early November the music has stopped, but some kids haven't finished the dance. So, the first part of November the kids have Christmas card making sessions to finish them in enough time to get them to the states before Christmas. When the kids have finished, we translate them, stuff them, seal them, weigh them... and so on.

Last year we wrote a blog about helping to translate the cards while we were on a short break from language school. We enjoyed so much reading what the kids would have to say to their sponsor. This year was was no let down, I think by far the Christmas cards from our kids are the best ones around. Last year we shared with you one funny card written by Samy for Bob. We can't remember which kid it was this year, but the card read "Merry Christmas. God bless you. I love all of my sponsors. You are my favorite sponsor. Merry Christmas." What made it even funnier is that we know that they kid had not met that sponsor.

We'll take this time to clarify a bit what a "sponsor" is for one of our kiddos. New Life Children's Home operates off of donations. One way of connecting with the ministry of NLCH is being a child sponsor. A child sponsor donates $25 per month. That money goes to pay for food, clothing, medical care, school, and anything else that you can imagine that a child would need. The goal is for each child to have 12 sponsors. If this is something you think you, your small group or Sunday school class might be interested in, please email us for more information.

Keep your browser pointed here in the next few days... Friday we will take the little boys out on a surprise excursion, you'll want to see pictures of that.