Saturday is the busiest day at Esther's House, and it went amazingly from start to finish!

Waking up to the sound of running water was a great start to the day! Although I guess I should clarify that by "running water" I mean we had water flowing from our backyard faucet. While the team was here we were having to fill buckets and bottles at Esther's House and bring them into town, so having running water in any form is a welcomed change!

Another praise is that I drove from our house in town to Esther's House without any problems at all! Alyssa and I said a little prayer before getting in the car. =) Doug Sarver, our missions pastor, was an awesome driving teacher last week--I've never driven a manual car before, especially not on the left-hand side of the road and on the right-hand side of the car! With all the possible problems that might come from living in Malawi, driving was the ONLY thing I was concerned about. I'm hoping it wasn't just beginner's luck!

Saturday is the day we have our widow and orphan program--the widows walked to Esther's House and arrived by mid-morning for fellowship, lunch, and they then spent time doing a Bible study. The kids had class with Joshua (one of our house parents) and lunch. After lunch Alyssa spoke to them about some of the new rules and rewards we will be putting into place, and then I taught a lesson sin and repentance.

One of the new things we started this month is rewarding kids for their good attendance. It is mandatory for the children to attend afternoon classes, but it was brought to our attention that not all of them were. Instead of punishing the majority for not attending class, we decided to reward the kids that have been coming to class. After our afternoon class today, we had our "good attendance party," which consisted of s'mores, juice, and water balloon games. It's funny that you can go down an aisle at Wal-Mart and find a huge variety of different kinds of marshmallows, but most Malawians have never heard of them! And chocolate is definitely not something that is eaten often, so everyone (staff included) was hyped about the s'mores. Alyssa explained what 's'mores' meant, and by the time we were finished they were all chanting "we want s'more!"

Enelesi with her s'more =))

& Nedson with his

Limbani

After s'mores, we did a water balloon tossing game that everyone loved! We had them partner up, and with every successful toss they would take one step back. Somehow Enelesi and Elford, two kids who don't enjoy catching, ended up being partners. A few times they would toss their water balloon, drop it, and it wouldn't break--it would just kind of bounce around on the ground; they thought that was the funniest thing ever!

Filling up water balloons

Water balloon toss

We're not sure what to do for next month's reward day, but it'll have to be good! Hopefully this will encourage the other kids to attend class every day.

I had forgotten how much I missed these kids! I feel incredibly blessed to have gotten to spend all day with them! They discovered how to take pictures and videos on my iPhone, so I'll have to figure out how to those up here at some point. =)

♥ S

Luke 6: 43-45