Wow, I am usually much better about keeping up with this! Things have been so busy over the last week, every time I sat down to try and write, something would come up and I would forget to go back to it. Things are going well though, let me see if I can recap for you. :)
Kids Club is still going really well with the Mystery Suspect. I am so surprised by how popular this has become, and I am just praying that it will continue. We eliminated another suspect last week, but we told the kids that they were going to have to come to church on Sunday to find out who it was. (We have a bulletin board at church now with all the possible "suspects" pictures on it so we can X them off when they are no longer a suspect). Well, Carisa and I both forgot to update the board before Sunday morning, and when we got to church we found the bulletin board surrounded by kids wondering who was eliminated! We quickly fixed it, and the kids were excited to have another clue as to who it is. Many of them are pretty convinced that I am the culprit, so I'm excited to eliminate myself in a few weeks, and shake things up a bit. (I still haven't decided who the actual culprit is, haha).
Wednesday night was Prayer Pals and although the night went pretty well, Carisa and I realized that having all of our kids come on the same night just isn't going to work out anymore. We have close to 50 kids in the program now, and we are adding more all the time. The Hope House just isn't big enough for all of those kids, plus its a lot of chaos to control. We have been brainstorming solutions and we have decided to switch back to having it on 2 separate nights. I am sad that she and I won't be running them together (its too much for both of us to go on both nights), but it is what we need to do. I will keep Wednesday nights and Carisa is going to have hers on Sunday nights. We are going to try and split the "problem" kids as evenly as possible, so hopefully that will help as well. Plus, she is always available to help me on a night that I am short on leaders, and vice versa, so I think this will help everything run much smoother. We both love Prayer Pals so much, but it has become so stressful and so much work, we want to get back to having fun with kids!
Teen Club continues to be a challenge for me, but I am also enjoying it. Its nice to get to see a lot of the teens 2 times a week now, at God Squad and Teen Club. I think I'm building more relationships this way, and I like that. Dario came this week, and it was awesome to see him making steps on his own toward Christ. He is now significantly taller than me, and I can't handle that!
Friday was supposed to be my day off (as usual), but I got a phone call around 10 a.m. that Bonita was really sick and needed to go to the emergency room. So, I took her, her mom and Linda to the children's hospital and waited with them in the ER for several hours. We would have been seen faster, but we had to wait for a translator because her mom doesn't speak much English, and I don't speak much Spanish. We were finally seen around 5 p.m. and discovered that Bonita has strep throat. They gave her medicine and she is already feeling much better. The poor girl was so sad on Friday. I took Zuly and Linda to their skating lessons on Friday night and they again had fun. Bonita was upset that she had to miss them, but she needs the lessons the least anyway, haha.
Saturday turned out to be a really full day. I got up at 7 a.m. to go to worship practice. I left there to go to the gym (which I am still loving!). From there I headed to the AIM base to help Elizabeth out with some training. I was there until about 2, when I headed home to set up for a party I was having. One of the teens, "Missy", just got her braces off so we decided to have a party for her where we would eat all the foods that she wasn't allowed to eat when she had braces. It was a blast! We had about 10 people come and we laughed a lot, played Dance Dance Revolution, and ended up having several eating contests. As my friend Chris says, a good time was had by all. I kicked everyone out around 6, and I was exhausted! Joy came over after that and we just chilled for the rest of the night, which felt so good.
Sunday School was good, but pretty challenging yesterday. There are some days when the girls really seem to get it, and others when they seem to be somewhere else completely. Most of the girls, however, are at least trying to get it. There is one girl in our class that goes from trying to not caring and then back again, over and over. We love her SO much and want desperately for her to seek the Lord with all her heart, but she can be such a distraction sometimes. Yesterday was one of those times. I think the class went well over all though. We were talking about loving out enemies and I have an amazing life story about that. If it wasn't for my friend Catherine continually loving me, even when I made myself her enemy, I wouldn't be a believer today...I don't know where I would be. I was able to share with the girls how important it was to me that she loved me even when I was my worst, and how that changed my life. I hope they took something from that and will actually put it into practice. It was nice to hear that the girls couldn't even imagine me being mean to people...God can definitely do miracles!!
After church a group of us went out to lunch and it was so much fun! We laughed together a lot, which I have been missing for a while. Bonita and Zuly were the only 2 kids that went to church (the rest accidentally overslept), and they had fun too. Its very rare that I get to spend time with just a few kids at a time anymore, so I really cherished that time with them, especially Bonita. I can't remember the last time I got to hang out with just Bonita, or just Linda...or even just the two of them together. I really miss that. After lunch I picked up the other kids (Linda, Pedro and Miguel) and took them to basketball. I had so much fun watching them. Bonita must have thought she was in ballet class the way she was prancing around the court. It was hilarious watching Frankie try to get her to be aggressive. Pedro finally got hearing aids for his ears and he is already behaving so much better! I am sure a least some of his behavior struggles have been from his inability to hear when people are talking to him. So far he isn't embarrassed by them either, which is good. He is having surgery on March 27th, and he's pretty scared about it. Its actually given us a lot of good opportunities to talk about trusting in the Lord, and he is very receptive to what I say. He still has his struggles, but I am seeing him change slowly, and I am enjoying it. They played a game at the end of the practice and I was really impressed by how well they all played, and especially how they worked together with their teams (Bonita and Miguel were on one team with others, and Linda and Pedro were on another team). Miguel scored all the points that his team had, actually dribbling between a kids legs one time to get to the basket. I laughed so hard! It was great!!
I was exhausted last night, so I stayed in, cooked dinner and Alex and Frankie and I watched season 2 of "The Office" for several hours...which again made me laugh so hard! Alex is here visiting (she will eventually be my roommate whenever God opens the door fer her to move here) and its been really nice having her around. She is only here for a week, then she will lead an AIM trip here in Philly and then head back to Mississippi. She is in the process of support raising, and I am praying that God will speed it all up so she can get here soon!
I am still doing really well about getting up early and going to the gym, and I am still loving it. I need to get better about going to bed earlier, but I will get there. I'm not ready to run a marathon yet, but that's okay with me. At this point in my life, and in my workout, I am just seeking the strength to persevere and trying to build up endurance for the race ahead. My prayer recently has been that someday I would be able to really say, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith". In fact, that verse is perfect for me now. Fight, endurance and faith...that's what I need so desperately...and I know only He can provide.
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