The Princes and the Paupers

The past few weeks have been filled with our usual daily activities, as well as some new adventures. Lauren continues to go to the secondary school, and has had more opportunities to teach as of late. She is teaching a series on Jonah with the tenth graders, and so far it has been going well. Bekah is still helping with the preschool, and is finally learning some of children’s songs (in Morre and in French). She also learned a new game, Renard passé-passe, which is similar to Duck Duck Goose. She continues in the ever present struggle to teach the toddlers their colors.

Two weeks ago, we had the opportunity to visit the home of one of the boys that lives in the orphanage, Barto. We helped his family begin their harvest of millet, which is a grain. We met his father, sister, and nephew, and enjoyed seeing where he lives, when not at the orphanage. Barto lives at the orphanage because there is no secondary school where he lives, and he wanted to continue his education in order to go to medical school.

Last week, there was a celebration for the new directors of the orphanage. Mike and Amy Riddering have been learning from Ruth Cox for about a year how to run the orphanage, and have now officially taken over. Ruth is moving to the south of the country to begin a new orphanage. Even though we couldn’t understand what was happening at the actual ceremony, the party atmosphere before and the party afterwards were really fun. Everyone looked very nice and was in good spirits. We had chicken and salad (and sodas!), with a very good local dressing. While we dined, we were at the same table with two kings. Then the kids and Bekah watched a movie, The Amazing Spiderman, outside on the projector.

We had to say goodbye to one of our roommates, Emily, on Tuesday. We went to Ouaga on Monday      with Mike and Amy to drop off their friend, Pat, who returned to Florida on Monday night. At that time, we left Emily in Ouaga with her missions organization, so that she can touch base with them before she left for Colorado on Friday. While in Ouaga, we also got hamburgers, French fries, and ICE CREAM J