"It hit me......I'm tired."

So today we talked about joy and peace, it was another successful day! We started out singing and they love to sing, again we sang the classic church VBS songs. And we even had more kids today, it's not like in the States where you have to sign up for VBS. More children were able to come which made us excited, but that meant even more cute little kids running around. We had 53 kids today. I'm not for sure if we mentioned this in the last post, but only the older kids know Samoan, so we have a translator. We split up into groups to do crafts today, so it was kind of chaotic when I was trying to get all of my kids seated and helping them know what to do, but somehow we managed to get it all finished. The first thing we did was a puppet show of Paul and Silas being joyful even though they were in jail. Kate and I did the puppet show, and this was my first time doing puppets so I made a few mistakes. It was hard for me to read my lines and move the puppet at the same time. I even lost my place a few times....ooops! They understood the story after it was translated and laughed a whole lot at our silly puppet moving skills. After that we split up into groups and made happy Paul and Silas faces in a jail. After that we had raisins as a snack so they could make a joyful face on the plate and then eat them. Raisins....some of them liked them while others didn't. I guess we should have thought that over a little more, I'm just glad I didn't have to eat them. Then we told the story of Jesus Calms the storm for peace. We even had the kids do a rainstorm during the story. It sounded pretty cool! Then we made little boats and waves for the second craft. We got back into the same group for crafts. I had a few kids that were able to do theirs on their own, but the rest needed help. I was tapped by the little kids the whole time and got the cute little kid face as they handed their papers to me. I also had a kid drop his boat in a little stream off of a little ledge, which then had all of the little kids standing by a dangerous place where they could fall. I was like AHHHHH, get back please and they sat back down again....a little scary though. At the end when everyone was finished cutting and pasting I had one little boy that kept going around to all of the other groups and picking up their rubbish (trash) and come hand it to me with a proud face saying, look at me, I'm so helpful! After that, we used a parachute to make waves and the storm. Oh wow......they loved this idea and game. We only did it a few times because it was so crazy and we were about out of time. At the end we handed back all of their papers which was again chaotic. By that time the parents had got out, so they were eager to run around. Everything got passed around and we finished another great day.

The kids are so sweet and I just smile and laugh whenever I'm around them. They loved just being around us and talking to us. The ages range from 3 year olds to 8th grade. I'm just so thankful that I'm able to be around them. It makes me pray and desire for the sweetness and love these children have. I should be more like them; loving others without questions and being a friend to those I don't even know. I thank God for the kids here in Samoa.

In the car after we were leaving from lunch I said to Marci, "It hit me, I'm tired." Marci then proceeded to hit my face two times, once on each cheek. She thought I said "hit me, I'm tired" We got so tickled and laughed for a long time, once I told her what I really said. Don't worry though, we took a nap so we're all ready for the night lecture and tomorrow morning. We even already made more things for our crafts since we will probably have even more kids tomorrow.