Program? What program?

I'm going to talk about some stuff a little out of order. No offense to Jeff and Blake, but I'm going to skip over my Nairobi trip for the time being to when I can put up pictures of my adventures there.

One of my best friends Michelle came to Malawi with me for 10 days...and it was super fantastic. She was with me during the hard transition of being surrounded by people 24/7 for 6 weeks to the very real emptiness of my house. It was so nice to have someone to cling to while I cried instead of my pillow or my puppy.

Not only was she a crying shoulder for me, but she really gave me the "slap in the face" I needed to get back to work here in Mzuzu. She gave me so much motivation and encouragement about my other ministries here in town.

One of the them was SOS orphanage. I had heard about this orphanage and planned on taking Michelle so we could go play with kids. I hadn't been there before and in fact, I didn't even know how to get out there. Well, we found it finally on Thursday and we ended up only having time to meet the administrator and setting up a time for me to come back and "play with the kids" as I put it.

SOS isn't a religious affiliated place...in fact, it was started by a guy in Austria and they welcome and encourage all religious views. So my thinking was...well...maybe I can come and play with kids and God will open up opportunities for me to maybe share with a few kids or the house mothers.

So, I go back today for my first visit. When I get the there, the administrator goes....
"I have assembled the 150 children, and the 15 house mothers for your 40 minute program."

Uhhhh....program?

I quickly started going through things I could do in my head...what would I say...what would we do?!
I kind of just mumbled something about...Uh..I'm just here to play with kids..we don't have to do a program...

The director went on to say that I should come every other week...share my "spiritual" things with the kids each time I come...that way that would help them in school and in life.

Uh, okay!

So, the day ended up with me getting up and introducing myself to all these kids...telling me them about me...then sharing my testimony...letting them ask me questions...then I got to personally meet with the house mothers and we laughed and chatted as I learned each of their names. I told them I would be coming back regularly just to be friends and tell them things that Jesus is teaching me in the Bible.

The lady that is over the youth thinks that I could work with the house mothers to and maybe share with them sometimes. And some weeks I can work with the older youth kids and other weeks the younger ones.

Wow.

Here I was going in trying to just "play" with kids and God totally opened up an opportunity.

Woot! Ministry in Mzuzu OTHER than teaching the Laffoon kids...CHECK!