Gonna Dance!

This morning we spent at Compassion Kids at Kihesa Church just north of us here in Iringa. The 280 or so kids are taken in by this large organization to provide food, health assessment, education and spiritual support. The church acts as a center of this event but it is ecumenical and throughout the world. We played number games, hand jive and sang to them. The best part was a game where one child in the center of a large circle of kids sings about their favorite person and then goes to the edge of the circle and invites that person into the middle. Kids called on each other until one kid decided that Dale was his favorite person and Dale called Carrie in and the kids and then the kids called Sharon and I in. We danced and sang along with this great throng of eager little ones.

We then gathered them in little groups to hear their names and play more games. Their favorite was numbers and letters. Most could count easily in English and they were so happy when we counted in Swahili. Many just wanted to talk to us and hear us try to pronounce their names.

We had to make a market run after Compassion Kids. Dale, Tobie, Caleb and I went off to see if we could get all the things on our list. Tobie knew the market well so he led us to the tomatoes, cucumbers and the bananas. We sort of looked like a silly parade of white folks weaving our way thru the narrow aisles with a little boy (Tobie) in a green Fish Lake Lutheran Church shirt leading the way. We did well and completed our list. We had 5 cucumbers instead of two so I guess we will be eating cucumbers for the next few days. After the market we tried to some cooking but Thomas Edison was not happy with us and send us a nice little thunderstorm.When it rains there is a front stoop on the building that is lower than the parking lot and garden around it. We have to ford a small lake to leave the apartment.

The power went out again. We have been without electricity 10 hours on Friday and 6 hours on Saturday morning. This time the power stayed out until we were up at the restaurant up the hill and it has been back on for the past 2 hours. We finally have our internet running at a speed where Skype and Magic Jack work just fine. Now if we could only keep electricity long enough to recharge the laptop, we could use those cool services. Time for a little reading and bed. Church tomorrow at Nduli, a little town 20 kilometers north of Iringa. This church only has one service and I am sure they will feed us lunch so it will be a full day.