Photo Album Riots

I thought I was going to start a riot today when I pulled out my photo album with pictures from home.  I had just a few kids with me at first, showing them and explaining each of the pictures and then it was like I became the Pied Piper and they all just started showing up.  I made the mistake of sitting on the ground while showing the pictures so I became like a jungle gym in a matter of minutes.  I thought I was going to suffocate under a pile of African children.  And not everybody would come to see them all at once, so kids would come in at different points in the album and each time, they would say, "Start over! Start over!  I missed the first part!"  I must have gone through that album at least half a dozen times.  After dinner, other children must have caught wind that I had photos and they would come up ask me to show them my photos.  I eventually just had to tell them no because I knew it was going to be an endless cycle and quite honestly, I was tired of repeating myself. 

After my photo album riot and some general playtime, I went to one of the cottages to have devotions with the children.  Here's how the village is set up, to give you some understanding.  There are 91 children here, with roughly ten cottages now, separated boys and girls, with nine or so kids in each.  Each cottage has a "mama," a single woman who is a native Kenyan who has made a sacrifice to live with and raise these children as her own.  She literally is their mother, it's not simply an 8-5 job.  She lives with them, eats with them, disciplines them, cares for them.  So at night, each cottage has their own devotional time, led by their mama.  Tonight I went to Joppa cottage for their devotional.  They generally sing a few songs and then the mama reads from the Bible and then discusses it for a bit, offering the kids some basic application.

Well, tonight I sat squeezed between David and Michael. I'm pretty sure if you put Michael in a furry suit with just his face sticking out, he would look like an Ewok from Star Wars, and I don't say that to be funny just that the kid is so stinking cute.  But poor David - the kid nearly had me in tears from both laughing and crying.  We started singing a song which I can't remember which and this kid just let loose.  I mean, he was belting it for all he was worth and I nearly started laughing out loud and had to work so hard at keeping it in.  He was just so oblivious to how loud he was singing.  But it was so beautiful and so precious.  And then I wanted to cry because hearing these kids sing about Jesus both in English and in Swahili was just one of the sweetest and most sincere sounds.  They sang with a heart that was genuine, even at 3 or 4 years old.  The mama asked me at the end to share with them anything I had on my heart and I just had to tell them how grateful I was to be with them and to hear their beautiful voices.  And I genuinely meant it.

In other news - be praying for the country as a whole right now.  Kenya will be voting on a new constitution tomorrow.  I've only a limited understanding of what it means, but from what I've been told the current president promised the country would have a new constituion within his first 100 days in office.  That was 7 years ago.  There is division, no doubt, as to who is for and who is against.  But it will carry hefty implications depending on the outcome.