January 6, 2012

January 6, 2012 Belmopan Orphanage

This morning, they made French toast. I decided to get up early enough this time to go to the kitchen and eat some of what was left and I'm glad I did because we rushed through lunch later in the day. We had class in the morning and we focused our discussion on Matthew 5. I had planned to nap for the afternoon, but it was warm enough and I had the time to do laundry instead. So, Cody and I got two of the big bins from the kitchen and a large strainer, and I added my little tide packet to the wash. I was happy that washing our big load worked so well, as I had only hand washed a few things at a time at home. We hung everything to dry on the playground on campus and all except for the socks and jeans are dry. Close to lunchtime, Christy ran around telling us that she was going to the orphanage in Belmopan and to get ready if we wanted to come along. So, we changed into skirts, stuffed down a sandwich, and gathered into the van. The drive was about 15 minutes, thank the Lord, because we were crunched pretty tight. We arrived at the blue building that was the Capitol's orphanage. As soon I we arrived, a little boy named Lindi came up to me and asked me if I could read “The Abdominal Snowman,” which is one of those books where you can make a choice of what will happen next.

Every time that we reached “The End,” he would flip the pages back to make a different choice. So, we read about six different endings, then Ginny took over my reading job. I was so aggravated at the gnat that flew in my eye because I could not get it out and it hurt so bad! Plus it made it really difficult to read to him because I kept rubbing my eye. There were many children there from the ages of 1-17. I thought it was interesting that there were so many adults and mothers there helping with the children. It felt like a daycare a little because adults would come in off of the street to sit with each other while they watched the kids run around. The building and the yard were small, but adequate for the amount of children. I'm not sure how many children there were because every time I turned the corner I saw another child that I hadn't seen before. Christy brought sun-catchers for the children to paint and those beads that you iron together. The children loved working with the crafts and one little girl decided to repeatedly paint her sun-catcher. She would paint her car, then wash the paint off, and paint the car again. I guess she was never satisfied or she just enjoyed washing the paint off. There were several babies around the age of one, who were so preciously cute. One of the toddlers was named Moses and he was so rowdy! It was everything that was in me just to hang onto his wallering body! He was so adorable though, especially when we were cleaning up the beads. He would squat down and pick up the beads, then hand them to us to put into the container. We noticed while we were there that many of the toddlers had not said a word, apparently they never have spoken.

After our time at the orphanage, we drove back to our campground, and I went to bed. I feel so tired, I have not done so many different things in such a small amount of time. We had spaghetti again, which was even better than last time. We watched a video about Mother Teresa and were able to see how caring she truly was. The education group arrived this evening to start their month in Belize, I hope that God has big things in store for them. I hope that everyone's lives are dramatically changed for the good while we are here. I am so happy for this opportunity, I wish that every person in America could experience a developing country, their perspectives would change for the better I am sure.