Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Day 6

Day 6: Market day

Morning light streams through our widows as we hold devotions and prepare for the day ahead. Today we will buy all of the children presents and supplies for school. Guided by some of the older girls from WLH, we traipse down to the nearby market place to gather everything. Pastor Daniel is buying all of the children new shoes because theirs are so worn and some are too big or too small for the owners. Each of the kids from our group is getting a special present for one of the WLH kids and the teachers are all buying things for their classes. Jae Young and I take our helpers and go to a few stationary shops where we pick out shoulder bags, pens and pencils, notebooks, and even a few stickers to fill them up. All the shopping takes us the whole morning, so after we drop off our purchases at the hotel, we head back to WLH for lunch.

I have been experiencing stomach problems for almost the entire trip (as have some others in our group) but this day is much worse, and by the time we reach WLH, the stomach pains are bad enough to prevent me partaking in the delicious looking meal of ox tail soup. Instead, I eat a little guk (rice gruel) and take it easy the rest of the afternoon while the others play soccer and other games.

Once again in the evening, we have a time of sharing from Pastor Jeon and then a special treat. The older kids have prepared some worship song dances for us and have been practicing them all week. They perform them for us and they are absolutely terrific. Everyone cheers and claps for them, then Pastor Daniel gets up and thanks them. After thanking the kids, he then starts kidding the women who help out at the orphanage. During the dancing, they had been enthusiastically clapping along and shouting loudly so now he wants them to come up and speak. But they are so shy and embarrassed they hide their faces and laugh. He ribs them about being so animated one minute and so shy and demure the next, and they good-naturedly smile and then eventually say a few words about their volunteer work.

Tonight is tough work for me to keep awake. I am glad and yet sad to get in the van to go back to the hotel because I know tomorrow is our last day with the kids. But I am comforted by the fact that we get to share our presents with them. When I crawl into bed, I lay there think how fast the time has gone by, yet I feel as if I have known the WLH people my whole life. I feel now that they are somehow family, somehow connected, and best part is, it’s true because they are part of my heavenly family; God’s family.

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