Week 4: Connection

One month already down, and it's hard to believe how natural life here feels. To give you an idea of how settled in I am, I recognize some babies by just hearing their crying. I'd say the girls are getting as comfortable with us as we are with them, which is an answer to prayer. At the beginning of my time here, I wrote down a prayer request specifically about connecting with the girls and other staff, and just a few weeks later I already feel like I'm truly part of the Olmalaika family. In talking with the other SM girls, we realized we're so very attached to each and every one of them already. There's one baby, Kelvin, that some of the ladies jokingly refer to as my baby. This week's theme is definitely connection so that's what I wanted to show in the pictures for this entry! Instead of a recap, this entry will just be pictures from these last few days with the context behind them. But sometimes that's more fun :)

Starting off strong with probably one of my favorite pictures, this is Collins (you may remember from last week). He made this face first, not me, let the record show. He's such a funny baby and he always crawls over to where I am to practice his standing. He's also found a new way to amuse himself, which is to look at me and go "DAH!" and then I pretend to be super scared, which he thinks is the funniest thing in the world. This usually goes on for many many repeats until he decides it's time to practice standing again. And following the exact same routine every time, he takes both my hands to be steady, climbs on to stand on my legs, and then leans his head back telling me to lower him to the ground and pull him back up (another of his favorite games that makes him giggle like crazy). It's so sweet that he knows I've got him every time, except for when he leans back and he forgets that he hasn't grabbed my hands yet (sorry Collins).

This next one is just girls being silly. Here we have (from left to right) Triza, Sharleen, and Naitai, with Katie in the background. They're some of the younger girls and this picture is us on Sabbath afternoon right after they reinvented the game "Red light, Green light". By reinvent I mean that they made up their own rules.

This is "my" baby, Kelvin, who loves to be held all the time. Even when he's asleep he'd rather be in someone's arms.

Another small heartwarming connection moment! Twice this week the girls asked us to walk them to school just because, and even though we had to be up to leave by 6:50 am (I definitely napped a bit when we got back) and climb back up this steep hill, it was totally worth it!

Once we dropped them off they insisted we take a tour of the classrooms before class started, so that's what you see here. We got a lot of stares everywhere we went, but I know it was out of curiosity and the girls were happy to have us there so we didn't mind.

Friday afternoon we had two jobs: help roll out the chapati, and sort and clean the beans with the girls.

Katie and Lauran brought out some glittery eye shadow, which the girls LOVED and put all over each other and us.

This is me and Naitai, my little twin. She's always making sarcastic jabs at me but it's all love (so she says). We're smiling in our soccer uniforms but our eyes are tired because it just rained and everyone said they still wanted to play football (soccer) in the wet grass. It was worth it though! Did I accidentally kick the ball and it hit Naitai in the head? Maybe. Did she tell me later that Aunty Katie was her favorite and not me? Also maybe. It's okay I deserved that. And we're still besties.

Nearing the end! The girl beside me, Nosim, took her braids out and wanted twists and braids, so Shudear volunteered, and later I appointed myself as her helper to get it done faster. This is us after we finished her hair after a few hours of braiding! Some of the ladies came out to watch us while we were doing her hair and they said they approved.

This one has no connection to the girls, but if you watched my takeover on the @austudentmissions account on Instagram yesterday, you know we struggled to get this ice cream on market day. Today we tore into it and it was a 10/10. If anything this ice cream is a symbol of us SM girls bonding, because we kind of got scammed for it. Whoopsies.

That's my collage for this week, and it's a testament to prayers being answered even if they're not always immediate! The next time you have a prayer request, write it down with the day that you prayed for it and I guarantee it will strengthen your belief in prayer by seeing how God's timing works. Bye!