A Day of Joy

Today was the first day of school at the high school.  It starts at 11:00, but students were already arriving at 8am.  They began to pull all the desks and chairs out of the rooms and then proceeded to scrub down the entire floor.  When they had finished, they put everything back and sat down to start working on their class work.  Some classrooms had no teacher all day and yet, the students worked on their papers. I had to laugh as I imagined American high school students showing up to clean the entire school on the first day.

Our job today was to wash and paint walls.  I laughed again when I was given the brush that I was to do the cutting in with. As a matter of fact, I have laughed a lot here.  We were like a group of cats trying to figure out where we could be the most useful, with a bucket of paint and a brush.

About noon, an administrator came to tell me that I could come meet my sponsored child.   I entered the room and immediately recognized Christopher.  He had just turned 15 yesterday, so I got to give him his birthday gift personally.  Here before me stood a very quiet young man.  I was thankful for my years of youth work, as I tried to connect with him. He told me about his family and his dream to be a journalist.  I showed him pictures of the snow we are having back home and my family.  I asked him about futbol, (soccer) which I knew every boy had an interest in.  He said he played defender and that his favorite team was Manchester United. (I made a mental note to look for a jersey from that team.)

Then, I asked him what his other interests were and he said he loved to sing.  To my surprise, he let me record his singing. He had a very sweet and clear voice.  I told him I would play it whenever I was praying for him. 

I have so many more wonderful things to say about the day, but that will wait until another day.