Zelenes gets Shoes!

On Friday mornings, all the children (except the babies & toddlers) get together in front of Vero Castro's girls' house to do big circle.  They sing praise songs and then have a devotional time.  It is really neat to see so many children together praising God.  Because we are assigned to the Toddler House, we didn't get to go.  But the circle was out front as Alina & I passed by to head to the Toddler House.  We gave lots of hugs to children that we've gotten to know over the years on the way.

Big Circle (this is a borrowed picture, not mine)

When we arrived to the Toddler House, Karla asked me if I could watch the toddlers in the 'sala' (living/family room) while she did a circle devotion with the teenagers of the houses.  Alina & I headed into the 'sala' armed with 2 Dr. Seuss books & another book about posadas which I read to the children.  The Dr. Seuss books were already in Spanish, but the posada book was in English, so I had to translate it to Spanish.  By the time I was done reading the 3 books, the teen devotions were finished, so we could get the children ready for breakfast (rice & milk).  After breakfast, the routine is doing the dishes and heading over to the 'chosa' (multi-purpose room) for a while.  Generally after being/playing in the chosa for a while, the children either get to go to the playground or on a walk.  This time we headed to the playground because kids were grouped together and separated to get their photos taken for their sponsors.  These photos will become part of a Christmas card for their sponsors.  The girls looked SO CUTE in their dresses and with their hair done up really nice.

After pictures, we took the kiddos in for lunch and then sent them back to the 'sala' for their nap.  Alina & I approached a teen mom named Zelenes (her picture is one of the last that I posted in last year's blog), whose tennis shoes were one big rip back by the heel...the shoe wasn't even connected to the sole.  We brought 5 pairs of size 8 running shoes (donated by Alina's friend Amelia) and let Zelenes pick out a pair for herself.  She picked the purple running shoes with bright green shoe strings.  I would've taken a picture, but she is a very shy person who prefers not to have her picture taken.  She was very excited to have them and we saw her in those shoes that very afternoon when we came back from break.  We also left the mini-1 soccer ball for the toddlers that Alina's friend Paola had donated.  With gifts like that for younger kids, it's best to give them to the one in charge(so the kids don't fight over it), so we left the ball with Karla and are hoping to get a picture of the kids playing with the ball sometime soon.

After our lunch break we returned to the Toddler House to get the kids supper and then to give them showers.  On the way back to our room for the evening, we realized that Michell was once again given permission to stay out later & chat with us if we wanted to do so...so, that's what we did.  Alina played for quite a bit with Lilian who likes to pinch Alina's cheeks and make them very red for some odd reason.  They ran around quite a bit.  When the evening came to an end, we said our goodbyes and then headed back to our room.