found my place in the world

I think I can honestly say the events over the last few weeks have been the biggest contribution to my personal growth in the area of self awareness and self worth. I tackled a task that I feel has help me discover the perfect environment that revels my true mental maturity as a person. I believe I was faced with possibly the most important subject in life and I tackled it with a sense of integrity and confidence I never knew I had. The intensity of this job, without a doubt, has reviled my strengths as a individual and showed me where I truly belong...... Doing arts and crafts with children!!!!

I know it’s only September but if we want all these 150 students to complete a letter and Christmas cards to their sponsors across the world we need to get a move on it now! Of course I took on this task thinking it would be relatively easy. I first started with a school list of names and I.D numbers that I soon realized was very out dated. No problem. I just contacted Carole, our sponsor representative in Edmonton, for the updated list. What I wasn’t prepared for was the response to this request being tagged with a counter request. You see, Carole was also missing some vital information and I was now her avenue to this information. Child ages, grades, correct spelling of names and school photo’s where needed. Plus some children on the list who are no longer attendance to this school and children who are attendance are not yet on the list.
I’d like to say that in this photo I am enjoying the freedom of artistic self expression with the colors blue, red and green but I am actually trying to find each child's name and I.D#, which is most likely not there, and label their letters appropriately so they don’t get lost in confusion. In this culture the child's last name is the first name of their father which, I have learned, can sometimes change from one year to the next. And since the child doesn’t have a government document, such as a birth certificate, with date of birth and correct spelling of the name, this information is often left up to guesstimation. I had children who gave me their age and I was pretty certain they added a few years. 10 seems to be the most desired age. In the western hemisphere, parents are often harassed for giving all their six children names that start with the same letter making the world wide mistake of running though all your children's names, before landing on the one intend, more probable. but try this on for size. how about naming your children Maria Jose and Mario Jose! in the Portuguese language the same name can be given to a boy or girl but the letter at the end "a" or "o" will determine if it is masculine or feminine.

You can leave it to me to make sure that even the adults don’t walk away without taking a least a few moments to jump back in time to the glorious days of childhood.

After traveling around the classroom to each student that had completed their task I finally learned a very important word. “linha”. though I had formed a line to make my job a little easier, eagerness and curiosity caused the children to fall out of this method of order and into more of a hovering crowd. At this point I would practice my new word…..and let me tell you I certainly used it more than a few times!
I can't tell you how much joy i received watching these beautiful children color their picture for the sponsors. A small enjoyment we had as children that we most defiantly took for granted.

I would also like to take this time to thank Carole who has been helping me get this job done. I often get praise for giving up my job and being out here on the mission field but truthfully the people back home are just as important, if not more important, than the ones on the field. We simple could not do our job without the support and assistance of those in the western world. Whether you are donating your time/money, writing a detailed e-mail about the events in your life or even writing a small quick comment on the bottom of our blog posts, letting us know that you are thinking of us, it is all supporting and encouraging us a larger way that you think.