A Great Group of Kids...

So how far would you walk to get to church?

Would you get up at 6:15, dress your self and start walking 5 miles into town?

These children do.

Without their parents...

...some of whom are Muslim...

The church, by God's grace attempts to bless them with solid Biblical teaching,

and they bless the church with their lively singing during our break between Sunday school and church.

Here's a video of some of these kids singing at church.  I'm not super good at doing the whole video thing yet, so sorry about the shaky and blurry parts, but it's still a little taste of them.  :)



A couple of weeks ago I was inspired to purge through our toys.  We set aside a little more than half of our collection.  Not only do we not have space in this house for so many toys, but our kids really don't need them.  Ugh...it almost made us sick to see how much "stuff" we had sitting around.  Who needs more than a dozen stuffed animals or plastic dinosaurs?  So yesterday after church, we spread toys out on a table and the kids of the church all lined up and one-at-a-time came in and picked a toy out.

I was struck by a couple of things watching them, but what stood out to me the most was that they didn't stand and deliberate or agonize about what was the very best toy.  They came in, immediately saw something that they were grateful for and picked it out.  How many times have my kids been given a shelf full of toys to choose from (at the dentist, library, etc...) and they just.can't.choose.  The agony they show is a sign of too much stuff at home already.  These kids (especially the ones that walk to church) don't have any "toys" like what we think of as toys at home.  They saw the table that we set before them and were grateful.

So now they are enjoying new toys and our kids are *gasp* still happy with less.  :)

And afterward they show each other what they got and some of the girls carefully swaddle their new babies in their wraps. Then Eric offers to drive all 20 something kids and the three adults that do come with them back up the mountain.  A collective cheer rises up, they hop squish in the Land Rover, and sing their way back home.