Houseparents get a night off each week to relax and take a breather from the past week. Most missionary staff fill in for a shift on a rotating basis to help out and hang out with the kids when the houseparents are gone. At the end of the night, after reading a book or two to the kids, we spend time in prayer. Often there is at least one or two kids who want to pray. Prayer is the way each home closes their night, whether or not the houseparents are home. Some kids are well versed in the tradition, others are still skeptical, but all children are present and know that this is what we do.
This past week I was on duty in Eicher home as Dondon and Ivy had a night off. Just before the smaller boys were going to bed, I was praying with them and when I ended and was sending them to their rooms, one boy spoke up...
"Auntie Megan, he wants to pray," he says pointing at a three-year old.
"Oh, ok. Sure!" I respond. I encourage this boy to go ahead and this is what we hear....
"Dear Lord....Thank you, Lord...Lord, Lord...Thank you, God. Amen."
Hugs are given and boys are climbing in bed. As I leave for the night, I can't help but think of the faith of a child and the way God is changing lives at CSC. He has aunties, uncles, and friends guiding him and leading him to God. He knows how to close his eyes, fold his hands, and call on the name of the Lord. I'm grateful, that even at a young age, the children at CSC are learning from their caregivers and peers what it means to follow God with their hearts and lives, and that they're learning the importance of prayer!
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!
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!
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:
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.
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!