TGIF! - written 1-20-12

TGIF! This is one of those weeks where I was very aware that I was sooo glad that it was Friday!

This is the second week of school. We have doubled our student population and have 3 new teachers. This also means that we are not serving lunch to about 70, but we have gone up to serving about 140 lunches. You should see the n’shema pot. It takes 2 of our male workers to stir the n’shema. Benedict bought what he thought was a huge amount of pumpkin leaves to have to cook as relish for today. Unfortunately, they really cook down and there wasn’t enough for the upper grades.

I’m still trying to make order in my office. All of you who have been here and helped organize the office, it is almost all moved to a space about 1/3 the size. I don’t yet have glass in the windows, just the grill. So at the end of each day I have to move everything off of my desk that could get wet if it would rain overnight. The room is arranged in 2 areas – one for office and teacher resources, the other the library for students. Right now we also store all the cooking items in the library area. That includes 2 tubs of plates that we use, the huge pot and smaller pots, etc. It is a good thing we eat with our fingers here – no silverware to mess with.

Then the mud!! It has been raining quite a bit this week, so there is lots of mud. The children take off their shoes when they go into the classroom so that helps keep the rooms fairly clean.

Sue (from Buffalo, MN), it would make you so happy to see all 125 kids using the paths in the courtyard as we gather for morning meeting. There is enough room on each side of the hexagon for a class to stand. Of course, if there is lots of rain some of it is filled with water.

Folks who are sending their kids here have put together car pools to get the children to school. There is a car that comes from Liteta, one from Wangwa farms, one from Landless Corner. This has all been organized by the parents. We have nothing to do with it.

We called for a meeting of the parents since there are so many new students and we wanted to inform them of some of our policies and what to expect. I gave them the option of 2 different days and times to come for the meeting; one for 2:30 today, and one for 4:00 on Sunday. To my amazement and joy, we had about 50 parents show up today!! The meeting lasted over an hour. After I finished my part, we opened it up for questions. All of our experienced teachers were there as well. Overall it was a very good meeting.

We have eager children, hardworking teachers, good helpers, and a loving God who has provided the school and all that we have.