…I’m a Little Teapot…

This past week has been so good for a multitude of reasons. Sunday night we had a team Easter dinner and ate homemade pizza, oatmeal raisin cookies, and Lifesaver jelly beans from the US. Monday was a day off for the holiday weekend, Tuesday to the preschool, and Wednesday me, Stephen, Josh, and Nicky jumped in a combi for a day-trip to Windhoek to get supplies for the center and other random things. We met a lady for lunch who is responsible for a lot of the positive social justice programs implemented throughout the local area. Nicky wanted to talk to her to get some insight into the culture since she’ll be doing counseling for part of her job. We went to lunch at one of the best restaurants I’ve ever seen, called “The Teapot.” Listen to this--to get to the restaurant, you first have to walk through a huge greenhouse full of plants, trees, flowers, and sculptures spouting water into their attached basins. There’s a great little bead store situated like a tree-house in the middle of the greenhouse. Once you leave there, you can see the glass windows announcing “The Teapot” up ahead, and the decorations are exactly like what you must be imagining right now…Picture round tables topped with lilac fabric with a smaller polka-dotted tablecloth in the center. The chairs have a sense of whimsy, streaked in white paint to look like an antique chair left in an attic next to a window, where it got too much sun and too much dust. A small glass, oval-shaped vase holds a real (but tiny) bouquet of fresh flowers, and all the sugar and cream pots on the tables are delicate shades of celery green, rosy pink, and cornflower blue. Not too pastel, but definitely Tea Pot Pastel. Through the glass windows you can see geese playing in an enclosed pond and another huge water statue adds the refreshing sound of running water to the atmosphere. A colorful variety of teapots decorate the shop but the BEST part, the absolute cherry on top was this: the restaurant is home to the cutest (and therefore possibly ugliest) pug dog I’ve ever seen. Fat and with huge, wide-set bulging eyes, he walked around the tables, stopping to wait for food and then wiggling on his way to the next customer. It was a great lunch.

Thursday at the preschool, we made ribbon twirlers and went on a parade around Block E. It was incredible…Each kid had a shower curtain ring (compliments of Steve’s mom/aunt) with various colors of ribbon tied on and then a few random musical instruments to bang/shake/rattle, etc. The kids wore the ribbon-rings as bracelets, earrings, or else just held them and waved them as they went. We walked down the middle of the streets (28 kids and three adults) all singing songs about Jesus, playing instruments, performing some great ribbon dancing, and having a blast. I had to carry one of the youngest kids because he couldn’t keep up, and I felt more strongly than I have before that I was IN Africa…holding this baby as I walked down the street, surrounded by singing, yelling, running, dancing, clapping children praising the Lord in odds and ends of English and lots of clicking and laughing. It was so much fun and so beautiful to see the fun they had in getting out of the confines of the one-room schoolhouse. It also made me laugh to think how you would never take an entire classroom of preschoolers out for a sporadic walk in the middle of the day if you were teaching in the US. We didn’t use the “buddy system,” the teacher was in the very back, walking with another of the babies, the kids were running way ahead in the center of the road and it was pretty much mass chaos (but fun, mass chaos (: ). And everyone was fine and got back safe, but I’m pretty sure to do that in the US you’d need at least a signed permission slip and possibly an armed guard to accompany the walk…

Thursday night I stayed at Kristen’s again since it was her last Thursday left in Rehoboth…Both her and Mackenzie fly out this coming Sunday! They’ve been here 8 months, and now it’s time for home. Pretty crazy. Her host family has satellite TV, so I got to watch about 10 minutes of American Idol, which was wild. It made me realize I’m glad I don’t have to worry about “following” shows…TV is so addicting and so mindless a lot of the time. It’s been nice to just NOT have it for these past few months. I also met with Kristen and Mackenzie’s host sister because she wants me to design her dress for the Metric Farewell that is coming up in August, I think (like senior prom). I’m working on dresses--just designing, not making!--for two girls and it’s fun that I can still use that part of my life while I’m here.

Now Saturday--this was a great day. I spent all morning baking brownies because that night, we had a “Women’s Night” for the girls on the worship team at my church and for the girls from Kristen and Mac’s Bible study at Rehoboth High (26 in all showed up, plus 8 adults). We began the night by playing Human Tic Tac Toe and then did some introductions and said where we would go if we could go on holiday ANYwhere RIGHT now (where would you go?). Then I shared about my purity journey, my struggles, my past, and some scripture that talks about God’s view of how unmarried women should live and about how He can and will redeem you from ALL unrighteousness and purify you, them, me. We explained that “purity” is not just referring to the physical but also means what you think about, how you act, the words you speak, the music you listen to, the movies you watch, and so on. Then we passed around paper and pens and had them write down any and all questions they had regarding purity, relationships, sex, boys, God, and being a woman. They had incredible, honest, serious questions and we spent about an hour trying to answer them (there was a panel of four of us) and at the end, one of the married women who had came shared (in Afrikaans) her personal testimony. She also translated at various points in the night if we said something that she felt was really important for the girls to understand completely. It was such a blessing, and so encouraging to see her open up and be vulnerable with these young women. We prayed to wrap up and then projected High School Musical 3 on the wall for them to watch while we served them popcorn, peanut-butter-chocolate balls, brownies and ice cream, and cool drinks. Ah! It was so fun…And as I dished the brownies, I was rejoicing to finally be at that point because I was inspired to do the whole night by the idea of brownies. About three weeks ago, I didn’t have a translator in church, so I spent the whole service dreaming up this idea for a women’s night where we would talk about all the deep stuff of women’s hearts and then top the evening off with--what’s the best thing to serve a roomful of females?--a mega chocolatey dessert. After talking and planning with the rest of the Reho team, we finally arrived at the night, and I was so happy to dish the dessert and see how God had been so faithful with this idea and how He blessed the evening in HUGE ways…It was so good--and also for me to remember how important it is to pursue the things of Christ and live in purity in all areas of my life…I easily forget when I’m surrounded by all the temptations this world offers.

After the girls piled into Wenda’s combi to get dropped off at the hostel and home, I went with Nicky to Kristen and Mac’s house for my second sleep-over of the week (: Oh, I do love them. This was even better though because Nicky and Josh brought two sleeping bags with from the US, so we got to use them to sleep on the floor and ended up staying up until 2:30am talking…I felt like I was right back at home, getting only 4 ½ hours of sleep and laughing over some seriously good girl-talk. I was surprisingly awake for church but got to take a nice nap before our team meeting.

Now I’m gearing up for another week. We’re officially taking the Clown Worship on the road and going to three farm schools (Kristen, Catherine, and Heidi’s) this Tuesday to “perform” (: I’m so excited…I’ll keep you posted how it goes and hopefully will have some pictures!

Prayer Requests:
*the clown worships on Tuesday (safe traveling, energy, technology works, the kids understand the Gospel message…)

*Me, Steve, Josh and Nicky are planning a two-day mini day camp for May 6&7...We are hoping to get some community/church involvement and donations and also that kids would be excited to come!

*For Kristen and Mackenzie as they spend their final week in Namibia and then fly home and adjust/find jobs/see loved ones

Praise: the women’s night…Praise praise PRAISE the Lord!

I love you…Goodnight!
Britt