Getting to know the children

It is now Tuesday evening in China, and our team has had an amazing time working with the precious children here in the village.  We began our Monday morning taking a small tour around the grounds and then we joined a group of children by the wall who were riding tricycles and playing.  Soon after that, we held our classes inside the outreach center where we sang, danced, played games, and did crafts with all of the children who were school age - all of the children school age , that is, except for the ones who were ill with chicken pox!  Chicken pox is currently going around the houses, and many children have come down with them.

Another team from Columbus, Ohio is here and they are helping out in the mornings with our teaching.  It has been great getting to know them and sharing our time here in China with them.  This team also has three people who speak Chinese, so that has helped tremendously when we teach the children.

Monday afternoon was spent visiting the babies and toddlers inside of the houses while the school age children attended school.  That was such a sweet, sweet time of loving on the little ones by our group.  Oh, how wonderful it felt to hold and hug all of those little children. 

Tuesday turned out to be a slightly different kind of day.  We taught in the morning, and that went very well.  The children had already begun to recognize us, and that made the morning go very smoothly.  What a joy it was to sing with all those little faces smiling and singing and praising. 

Then most of our group headed to the local Walmart to do a shopping spree for the village.  It was a fun experience for our group, too.  One interesting thing in the store were the people and cart movers.  The carts lock into the ramp as they go along much like an escalator.  We ended up on an hour-long time crunch and had to fly through the store.  Since our six carts were piled high, our group received a lot of curious looks. 

A couple of us didn’t go to Walmart, but instead we headed to a Beijing police station.  Kelli’s passport and driver’s license went missing our first night here, so after looking for it and not finding it, she needed to get the process started to get another passport and visa.  We stopped by the police station, got a police report to take to the American Embassy, which was closed early today, so she will travel back to Beijing tomorrow to apply to expedite the process.  Could you keep her in your prayers so that the process goes quickly and smoothly? 

Shepherd’s Field is such an amazing place to spend a week.  Our team is so very glad we have come.  Thank you to everyone for your prayers and support.