Staff Blog
Visitors often ask what a typical day is like for those of us working at the shelter.
"Good question!," I usually respond with as I scramble for the words that can best answer that good, but complex question. And the truth is, there isn't one!
The beauty of CSC is that it is a vibrant place with a pulse. No day is the same as one you have had before. We all have job descriptions, but those go out the window when a need arises that has to be addressed. And sometimes that need was maybe never anticipated. So, you respond, you address the need.
There are common tasks for all of us: reports we should be working on, pictures we could be organizing, and blogs we should be writing... ;)
But there are other tasks that can become part of your day with little notice: spending time with adoptive families or visitors, meetings (in 1 week, I could attend 15 meetings!), taking children for appointments, being on duty (when a house parent is on their day off), sleeping at the shelter when the house parents will be gone overnight, attending birthday parties, taking notes during school conferences, organizing donations, attending school programs, assessing and admitting children, and the list goes on.
Every one of these tasks is just as important as the next. Attending a child's birthday party and praying over them as they start a new year in life is just as important as updating a report.
Assessing children for future admittance is just as significant as meeting with the house parents to discuss the health and behavior of the current children in their home.
During assessment:
Now:
The tasks before us on any given day are largely unknown! We can think we know what the day will look like, but God's plan for our day is usually different than ours. And that is okay. CSC is His ministry, He has made it what it is today and it is our job to just do what He puts before us. And truth be told, serving at CSC and being a part of these kids' lives is truly a blessing.
Life also seems to be a bit more exciting when living in a tropical country. Last week, during a house parent meeting, I happened to see an unusual shadow moving along the outside of our office. It was a snake! There were screams and excitement as we ran outside to see where it was going. The house father we were meeting with just so happens to like snakes (Thank you, Lord!), so he was eager to catch it. In fact, he decided to take that opportunity to practice a snake-catching technique he had seen before on TV! Amazingly, it worked. He was able to stop it and with the help of one of our guards they picked it up and put tape on its mouth---since it was actually poisonous!
There is never a dull moment here at CSC! Thanks for being a part of it all!
J-O-Y!
Loving life....and more specifically....hackysacks! :)
Thank you to our visitors for giving every kid their very own hackysack---as you can see, they were eagerly received!
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SRA Day!
Last Friday was SRA Day at school! SRA is our reading curriculum so it includes reading, writing, and spelling! We spent the morning having some fun reviewing things the kids had learned in SRA throughout the year. It started off with one student from each level sharing why they like SRA. Then we had a cheer competition. The children were divided into four groups and each group had 10 minutes to create their own cheer about SRA or reading. It was cool to see what they came up with!
After the cheering competition was the spelling contest! The kids took turns writing letters or words on the white board as a review of things they had learned. They also drew pictures that related to some of the themes our classes had studied. Some of the older kids went up and explained how their pictures related to the theme.
The final part of the program involved several presentations by our kids. The Level A students performed sang "The Alphabet Song". Jaime and Pretchy each did a beautiful job sharing poems about reading! Shiela & Rowena sang a duet of "America the Beautiful", a song they learned in one of their reading units. Then three of our Level C students shared stories they had written during class.
Here are some more pictures from our exciting day!
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Friends
Friendships are an important part of life at CSC. Although most of our children have siblings at CSC (about two thirds), they all seek out friends in their age group and enjoy hanging out, playing, making music and talking about life. Our kids can easily find friends who have similar backgrounds and can understand and accept what they have gone through in life. Some friendships can go on for several years, depending on how long the children stay at CSC. When a child leaves for adoption there are often sad friends left behind who wonder if they'll ever see them again. In some cases, friendships that began at CSC can pick up later on when children are placed in the same geographical area. Check out a few pictures of friends at CSC:
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Movie Night
One of the things we often hear at CSC is laughter, and one of the best places to hear it is during a movie night.
It's hard to organize a trip to the movie theater, so often times staff will gather up a group of kids and setup the projector in the library at the school. The movie night below was a "girl's night out" that Teacher Lindsay organized. However, being the IT guy, I was allowed to attend because I had to setup the screen and projector. :)
The movie was Mr. Popper's Penguins.
It's hard to see much in the video below, but it's really fun to listen to the laughter of the kids.
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The Littlest Waveboarder
Waveboarding is the cool thing to do during playtime here at CSC. Lots of the older kids got waveboards for Christmas, but recently more and more of the little kids want to try the waveboards as well. The other day I noticed this little lady trying out her older sister's waveboard in the driveway and I couldn't stop laughing - it was so cute! And she's so good at it!
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