Busy Week

Today marks the beginning of a busy week.

Mondays are our planning days. We usually go to the office, catch up on some internet time, and bring out the calendar to plan the possible children's activities for the week. They didn't have internet at the office today so we stayed at the house to plan and now we are at the internet cafe, writing our blogs and catching up on emails/facebook messages.

We have our week roughly planned out and this is how it looks so far:

Tuesday

We have a meeting with some ladies about working with their Orphans and Vulnerable Children initiative. They live in Harare and they have a real heart for the community here. They spoke to us at church two Sundays ago and we're going to the meeting to learn more about it and to see if there is any way we can get involved.

After that meeting, we have a meeting with some of the members of one of the churches here called River of Life. They put on an assembly every Friday at St. Catherine's and we have been involved with that since the first Friday we got here. We were unable to do the assembly this past Friday because they didn't have school, but we're meeting with them to plan a skit and some songs for this coming Friday.

When we're finished with that, we plan on making our trip to Father's House. The bible story for this week is Cain and Abel. John will read the story to the kids and we will ask the kids some questions after we read it. One of the kids will probably translate the story in Shona for us so that they can hear it from both the English and Shona perspective. After the story, we plan on doing some homework with the kids and playing a game outside with them. They enjoy being in the outdoors, which is great!

Wednesday

Today we plan on spending all day at Danai, painting some of the new rooms they have built for the older kids and hanging out with the kids after they get done with school. If possible, we would like to read the story of Cain and Abel to them as well and have a respect lesson afterwards. Last week we read the bible story and had a lesson over Please and Thank You. Since there are more children at Danai, it's a bit more chaotic, so it's nice to start off our time right. The kids also seemed to use what they learned from the lesson, as well. We're also hoping to split up the younger kids and the older kids at some point. We're wanting to do a devotional time with the older kids, which will be a great way for them to just be able to talk to us, and to have our full attention.

Thursday

We're planning on getting up pretty early on this day to go do some devotionals with the kids at one of the private school academies here in Harare. We're not quite sure if this is a set plan yet, though.

After we leave the school, we will be going to a ladies' devotional time, hosted by the River of Life church. We have been told that they will be making bracelets to sell, in order to help bring in some money for the new community center they will be building, benefiting the people living in the surrounding areas. I'm looking forward to getting to know some of these ladies, while making bracelets for a good cause.

In the afternoon, we make our way to Father's House once again. Since we read the story of Cain and Abel on Tuesday, we will be doing an activity today. The ideas are still up in the air for the craft, but we're thinking about either prayer journals or a prayer box. I think the kids would really enjoy that. I made prayer journals with the kids at Urban Connection in San Antonio two summers ago and they seemed to really enjoy them. After our craft, we plan on having some more homework/reading time, and then doing some more outdoorsy things.

Friday

Today is another paint day for Danai and probably our last. The rooms aren't too big so I don't think it should take us too long. In the afternoon, we plan on just hanging out with the kids when they get back from school again. We don't have a whole lot planned for the afternoon, because we are going to pick up the kids and Mary at Father's House to give them a weekend away. The plan is to take them to Emma's house (where the ACTS workers are staying), and just have a fun weekend with them. We are all so excited about this and ready to get to spend the whole weekend with some amazing kids!

That's the basic plan for this week. I just thought you may want to know some more details about the work we are doing. Of course, the things written down on the calendar don't always go according to plan. That's just how life works out, though. Only God knows what we're really going to be doing this week and that's the most exciting part.