Locked out of the Library

Because it's Friday, this morning began with Big Circle.  If I had not mentioned it last week, this is where ALL of the children of Emmanuel, staff and volunteers (and teams if there are any) come together in the special needs yard to sing praises to God, recite their memory passages that they had learned throughout the week, and then hear from His Word.  This morning our small girls got to recite their verse, actually verses...as the children generally memorize an entire chapter of the Bible to recite!  They did well.  One of the members of the Maryland team who had actually come 3 weeks early to teach the children how to play musical instruments led devotions this morning, talking about how vast the universe is...and how much MORE God is.

After circle, we headed to breakfast and then made a quick stop home so that Alina could change to shorts and get some water, before she headed off for her last day to spend volunteering with the Maryland group.  I headed back to the little girls' house to walk the girls to school and then begin classes.  When I got to the school, the library was locked.  I figured this wasn't much of a problem, since it had been locked on Monday as well; so I just waited a bit while interacting with a bunch of the medium girls who were waiting in the courtyard to be called into their classrooms.  As it got closer to class time, I asked Felipe where the key was to the library.  He hunted down Elvia and she tried to open the door with the key.  It wouldn't open.  She gave the key to Felipe, it still wouldn't open.  He gave it to a teacher who uses the library as a resource center most often, it wouldn't open.  They turned it over to Veronica (the elementary school principal), it wouldn't open.  She gave it to the boy who serves as custodian, it wouldn't open.  We were locked out!

If you know much about this orphanage, it's that it's constructed out of bricks.  There were only 2 ways into this library, through this door or through a window.  Windows are much different down here than they are in the States.  They consist of MANY small horizontal window panels, so it would require removing quite a few of them so that a small child could crawl through into the library and then hopefully be able to successfully unlock the door.  Veronica decided to call Wilson, one of the handymen from Emmanuel to come over to the school and work on getting it open.  Wilson took the entire doorknob off of the door so that we could get in and start class, and then while we were having classes, he proceeded to put a new doorknob on.

Also during our classes in the library, Mateo #2 (a volunteer from the Maryland group who calls himself this because his brother-in-law is also a Matthew and wanted to be #1) hung two paintings int he library that the group had done during the week.  One was a huge painting that just about went from floor to ceiling of a tree and all of the leaves of the tree were outlines of the students' hands who used the library most often.  As students came in today to our class, they took quite a bit of time to look at the tree to try to find their hand.

After morning classes, I walked with the little girls to their dining hall to eat lunch.  Each day the meal seems to be the same - vegetables in a ramen noodle soup.  Today as we were cleaning up after lunch, an older girl brought down a dish from the medium girls' house - spaghetti...all of our older girls just gobbled it up talking about how delicious it was!  They offered me a little bit, and I had a few noodles, but to me it was "just spaghetti"...but I guess after you eat the same thing for lunch day in & day out, it's amazing to them when they try something different.

On Fridays there are no afternoon classes, so the little girls went to the park (on the Emmanuel grounds) to play.  I took a walk around and just socialized with a bunch of the medium girls, like Yency, Coco, Leticia, etc.  It was a nice break from the regular routine.  When the little girls got back to the house, there were many Maryland volunteers waiting for them to say their goodbyes, since they leave tomorrow.  After the sweet goodbyes, it was time for supper and then baths.

When all of the girls were squeaky clean, I had a chance to sit down & have a nice, long chat with Doris.  She's been wanting this for the past week.  We sat together and she shared something that had been weighing on her heart over the past bunch of months.  We discussed the proper way to handle the situation and prayed over it.  When Karelia came to take the girls on a walk around the orphanage (to try to tire them out before bed), I headed back to the house since Alina wasn't feeling so well once again.  Thanks be to God that by the time I had gotten home, Alina's stomach ache had went away.  The talk with Doris had truly wiped me out, so I headed to bed very early tonight, but will be getting up at about 3am again tomorrow so a good night's rest will much be needed!