Sunday School

Note to self: when Haitians unexpectedly invite you to an event they are in any way involved with leading, you will probably be put on the spot for a speech/prayer/activity/something so THINK FAST.

So yesterday, Sunday, the older girls invited me to come back to the church with them in the afternoon. They said that they help lead a little kids sunday school class, and they thought I might like to come play with kids. Awesome! I was super-excited for several reason. 1. It's taken a lot longer to establish relationships with the older girls, so I was encouraged to see them reaching out to me. 2 I really like playing with kids. 3. I jump at any chance to get outside the orphanage walls and walk around.

Everything was going great, I was really enjoying watching the girls work together to wrangle a group of forty 8-15-year old kids into some semblance of order. The class met in an open area on the top floor of the church with an incredible view of the whole Port-au-Prince bay shining in the warm yellow light before sunset. The kids sang worship songs, memorized a bible verse, and were just starting to sing some more when Stephanie plops down beside me and says, "Okay, so what game are you going to play with the kids?"

My train of thought - First: "I should have seen this coming", then - "Duck duck goose! Wait, no, that's a terrible idea, there are way too many kids, and I don't know either 'duck' or 'goose' in Creole. Why can't I think of any other games???" After scrambling for a minute I remembered that Simon Says had recently been a huge hit in my English classes (thank you Katie times a gazillion). I quickly explained the game to Stephanie so she could help me explain it to the kids. She didn't understand what "Simon says" meant, so I said, "It's just a name, it could be Stephanie says, or Cecelia says, it doesn't matter." At that her eyes lit up with undertsanding and she proceeded to explain that the game we were going to play is called "Cecelia Di", explained the rules, and handed me a microphone. What followed was the most energetic and competitive game of Simon Says I have ever seen. So even though it was not remotely related to their bible verse for the day or anything like that, I'm going to go ahead and call it a success. And they invited me to come back again next week; which I plan to do, armed with an activity prepared in advance this time!