Hello!!  Here's a quick update of what's been going on this past week:

A team arrived this past Thursday with two men, two boys (mid 20's and 16) and two girls who are 15.  The guys went right to work Friday morning, building the halfway house for the children who are 18 so that they can start to transition out of the children's home and learn to be more independent.  It's nice having more people here, but we thought that the girls were around my age so I was really looking forward to that.  They will only be staying until the middle of next week, and then I don't know when the next team is coming.

Saturday we were able to pay to use the track to practice for this coming Saturday's competition.  We arrived at 8:30 and got started.  The kids hadn't been practicing long distance running, so the ones who are in the long distance events had some trouble.  We aren't even sure that they are going to qualify for those events.  Most of the kids are really good at sprinting and/or the field events, so they should qualify and hopefully place.  We didn't get back until about 1:30 and with the sunny, cloudless sky we had, everyone was exhausted.  My face, neck and feet got pretty sunburned (even though I put sunscreen on!) so I had to take leaves from the aloe plant behind the children's home to smear all over me!  It was a fun day and everyone is really excited for this Saturday!

Sunday morning I went to go play soccer with the girls again and was glad that we had some cool air to play in.  On Friday a few of the older guys were asking me about soccer, like what position I played, and how long I've played, so now they want to play against the girls some Saturday.  The warned me that they play really rough, but I think I can handle it!  The other girls are scared because they agree that the boys play too rough and that they will just laugh because we will lose, but I told them we just have to keep practicing every Sunday!  Later Sunday afternoon two of the children took me and the volunteer who's around my age horseback riding.  Something was wrong with my horse because it didn't want to move!!  The boy who was leading us gave me a whip to hit the horse and make it go, but I was really afraid to use it and that I would get thrown off!   He kept telling me to hit the horse, so finally I did and it started moving.  As we were walking, it kept going onto the side of the road to eat grass, so I kept falling behind.  The boy was looking out for me though, and kept coming back to help me out.  We ended up turning around earlier than they wanted to because I was getting too scared, but I told them I would definitely go again sometime as long as I had a different horse!

That's all I have for now.  As always, please pray for these children!