We headed to breakfast and then the women went off to measure the girls in the "grandes" yard. My job was to fill out blank post-its with the words: Shoe, Height, Weight, Shirt, Pants, Bust, Waist & Hips. The post-its then went to the next person who wrote down the name of the girl at the top. Then it was the girl's job to head to the different measuring stations to get all of the measurements listed above. When the post-it was completely filled out, she handed it to another girl who collected all of the measurements which will be put into an Excel list for sponsors to see exactly what size is needed if they choose to buy them clothing or shoes for Christmas. This list is usually posted in October sometime.
We tried to hurry through measuring the girls because there was a huge soccer game at Emmanuel for both the girls and the boys. There was a girls' team and a boys' team coming from in town to play against them and the winner would move on to the next town. For those of you in to sports, I would compare this to the play-offs. Our girls won, 7-0, but the boys lost 1-2...I guess it was a good game for the boys that really came down to the wire. We missed the second half because it was lunch time for us and our times for meals are pretty much right on.
For lunch we had stuff plantains. We grabbed a whole fried plantain, cut a slice from one end to the other and then stuffed it with ground beef and cabbage and a few other items (like a taco, only with the plantain as the shell). It was the first time I've ever had these.
After lunch we headed to the farm for activity day with the medium boys. We heard that last year the volunteers were ready to call it quits just about 1/2 hour into the activities with them because they were SO naughty. I guess the water balloon station was the worst and they just grabbed the balloons and chucked them at each other, disregarding any instructions on how to play the actual game. Guess who Joanne put in charge of the water balloon game???...yours truly. Alina did face-painting and Bob helped me with the water balloons. At the end of the night I received another yellow bead (for leadership) from Bob for "rocking the water balloon game" (his words, not mine). They boys were SUPER good when they came my way, although I think it helped that many of them already knew me from school last year when they were my students...so there was a level of respect there. After each group rotated through all of the activities, we fed the boys hot dogs for lunch and gave them prizes before they took off. Below is Lane's face...the Batman fanatic.
After the medium boys activities, we headed back to the team house for a break before supper. Although the team all headed back, I stopped in the big girls' yard and shared time with Doris. We had a very good chat. After supper, Juliet & Veronica (our cooks) opened up the Souvenir shop. I was surprised to see that they take credit cards this year. Perhaps after Bob leaves, I'll go SWIPE CRAZY.
This is a picture of this evening's team meeting.
I've figured out the bead system. We have an opportunity to give a bead to anyone in our group and explain why we're giving them this bead. The beads are different colors: Red, Green, White, Blue, and Yellow, and have different representations. Red is for an act of love, Green is for doing something outside of one's comfort zone, White is for spreading joy, Blue is for an act of humility, and Yellow is for an act of leadership. So I now have 2 yellow beads. This is strange because the true me never wanted to be a leader. I have taken the spiritual gifts test (95 questions) and leadership is NOT anywhere near close to the top of the list. I love that Joanne is the leader of this group!
After our team meeting, Kelsey & Bekah led a small devotional time with singing. I was very excited to see Carlos singing with them and asked if he'd be singing in church tomorrow. He is shy and shook his head, but once Kelsey and Bekah heard me, they begged him to sing with them and he agreed. We'll see how it goes!
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