Gratitude

Happy Fall to you all!   Hope you are greatly enjoying the change in colors and the cooler weather! I am missing it and am really missing it.  (Does that make sense?) We have had heat and no rain for so long. So much brown grass, and dry ground everywhere.  The sky will tease us with thunder and a bit of rain every once in awhile but we need some good downpours.

Last week we had a Harvest Party with our Hostel and Hostel One.  A lady from America sent the kids some candy and other goodies so we had a lot of fun with our prizes. The kids dressed up and showed off their creativity. That was Thursday. Friday was the first indoor soccer games.  Our school has three girls teams and two boys teams.  All of our dorm kids are involved in soccer except for one boy.  It is by far their favorite sport. They even get up early in the morning to play. They are good! Saturday was SKATE NIGHT!  Wyatt's class sponsored the event, so I helped them make 300 soft pretzels to sell.  They were a big hit, and the dorm smelled amazing!

This week we have finally started our Indonesian classes again.  We have a different teacher and hopefully this time it will be profitable.  It has been difficult finding someone who wants to teach us instead of just someone who wants to work on their own English.

Tomorrow is a big community-wide garage sale.  The dorm has a few booths since the kids and I have stuff to sell. We will donate most of the profits to Sophie's Papuan Soccer team.  Many of the girls on that team don't have shoes, or they have one pair that they share. It is not uncommon to see a kid with one shoe on and another kid with the other shoe on.  So our dorm wants to help their coach buy them shoes. She has already been able to buy some of them shoes and at least 5 or 6 of them have asked if she could keep the shoes at her house. They said if they bring them home someone will steal them. What a different life, huh? My friend Mandy said that her house helper came to work barefoot and said that during the night someone came and stole all of her family's shoes. They only had one pair each, but now they are gone. 

We have so much to be thankful for.  That was my prayer today. I downloaded this list of 31 Virtues to Pray for your Children and today's virtue was gratitude-to live lives overflowing with thankfulness.  That is what I want for me, and what I want for ALL of my kids.

I am continually thankful for you all.  Keep praying for us.

Love 

Rachel

The whole group.  We had a great time dressing up.

Rachel dressed in '80's fashion, Kim as a desperate housewife.

Seun was Iron Man, Sophie was Captain America.

Hannah was The Hulk.

Natasha was a clown.

Aaaand, we ate.

Wyatt's class making pretzels.

Skate night!!

Wyatt had to borrow some socks for the old time skates.

No traffic lights.  It was busy.