Birthdays, visitors, swimming

So I've decided if I get one blog posted in a week, at this point in my life, then I'm doing good! Between teams, kids, power outages, and the normal routine of life, it doesn't leave much time for blogging. Totally ok with that. But I like sharing life with you guys and updating the grandparents.

So this past week has been a good and busy one. The children out at Mattaw have been blessed to have people here to love on them and play a lot with them. This team consisted of some high school boys and a girl in jr. high so the kids have really enjoyed that. There's so much this past week that the team did that trying to recap every detail is almost impossible!

Saturday we had a birthday breakfast with the kids. I stayed up the night before and made 75 cinnamon rolls. It was fun. The staff and kids decided they prefer cinnamon rolls over cake. Easy enough since I can make the dough in advance and can make a lot for cheaper than a tiny cake.

There's a girl on the team, Aly, who is in jr. high. She did a fundraiser before coming to raise money to feed orphans. We felt it best to take food to the kids on the waiting list for house three at Mattaw. Two of them are Kristin and Mercy. They are sisters, ages 10 and 12. They live with their grandmother and the neighbors say she is not right in her head (the grandmother). Every morning the grandmother goes out of her mud hut first thing, circles around the house, then faces the neighbor and yells bad things. She thinks the neighbor murdered her daughter which was the mother to Kristin and Mercy. No one knows the real story but the story we know for sure is the girls are orphaned and in a bad situation. You can see the look of desperation and sadness on their face when we visit. Mercy has ran away several times and recently went to her uncles house because she thought the grandmother was refusing to let her come to Mattaw and because of lack of food. The grandmother was in the beginning because of not knowing if we are a good organization or not but now is wanting them to come. We are anticipating the day when they can come "home" to Mattaw Children's Village. Saturday Bud went with a few of the ladies on the team to pick them up first thing. When they first got to Mattaw we dug through clothes in the container to give to them plus the three siblings- Daisy, Brian and Michelle, who are also on the waiting list for house three. They came in rags that morning. Kristin was wearing a tattered sweatshirt that was faded but I could make out the picture on it was of skulls on fire. Yikes. They got their new clothes and the house parents helped show them where to bathe and change. They came out with a completely different demeanor about them. They were very happy and thankful. It's been great to give them a glimpse of hope again. They enjoyed coming for the birthday breakfast and sat quietly with a smile on their face most of the time.

We celebrated birthdays for David, Sophia, and Nehemiah. Like I said before, we are kinda playing catch up since the birthdays got out of order while we were in the states. We try to do the birthday parties when teams are here if we know they are coming since it's more fun for the kids and its great for the people on the team to experience them. Not that they're some big huge deal, well actually they are, to the kids they are a very big deal! They've never had someone celebrate a birthday for them and its a special time to pay individual attention to each child. We usually have candles for them to blow out, the kids have gotten great at singing the birthday song, and then we do presents. They usually get a new outfit, something for school, some sort of toy or game, and candy. Here they are in their new outfit...

Nehemiah, Sophia and David

(David just lost a tooth and was embarrassed to smile)

Nehemiah

Yesterday was the last full day here for the visitors. Before coming, some of the kids on the team did a fundraiser at their school for the kids called "kisses for Kenya". The kids at their school wrote messages on little pieces of paper and stuck a piece of candy to it. Then people could purchase them for a dollar to be handed out to kids in Kenya. Some of the money raised from that went to pay for our kids to go on a field trip today! They had a blast. We went to the museum this morning then to the pool for the afternoon. The kids were up extremely early in much anticipation. Bud showed up at 7:30am and said the kids were already ready and singing songs with excitement. We first went to the Kitale museum in the morning. I don't recommend it unless you want to accompany a group of precious children that are enjoying it. We then went to the Kitale club to swim. Not many of them had ever gone swimming. Those that had, had only been in a murky river. They caught on quick though. It was so much fun watching them splash and swim.

Daisy and Nelima

A whole lot of splashing went on the entire time

George did NOT want to get in the water, but he sure looked cute

Lucy did NOT like it either! But she knew how to still look sweet as can be in a swimsuit

Jenifer

Noah LOVED the water

One of our teachers, Helen. The teachers passed Claire around the entire time loving on her. Look how RED her hair looks here!

All of us!

The team left early this morning on easy coach bus to Nairobi. They'll spend a few days there and then fly out.

Today I'll be getting our house back in order, Claire back on schedule, and recouping from an extremely busy past week. We'll be planning out next week for our last team this year. We'll also be sending out a monthly update to sponsors. So if you happen to be a sponsor of one of the children, expect an update soon! If you don't receive one, that means we don't have your email so please email us: mattaw@yahoo.com. Thanks!