Thursday, August 29, 2013

Creative week with the girls

I had the privilege of spending several days last week with the girls in the village, doing creative projects in addition to talking about who God is and who we are as people (valued and loved by God) and what the gospel means. Many of the girls have been coming for a long time, but there were also some new faces.

On Monday I forgot to take pictures, but we made glass magnets -- I wish I'd brought more materials, but with what I had the girls each got to make and take home three. We heard the next day how much not only they liked them, but how much their mothers liked them too. :-)

On Tuesday, at the girls' request, we made friendship bracelets.


On Wednesday we made "wordless book" bracelets with crystal beads (including a heart symbolizing Jesus' love for us) and more friendship bracelets.



On Thursday we made flowers out of water bottles and glitter (I found a tutorial for it here). I'm still finding glitter everywhere! We had some special guests for the singing time (Luke and Nori, who plays guitar) and the girls really got into the songs -- another one! another one! It was a really fun day.





We ended the week with taking the girls swimming. I ended up catching a bad cold, so I didn't get to go to that, but I'm looking forward to spending more time with the girls next week at the regular meeting.

I'll be back at the street kids day center this week, which I'm also looking forward to.

Some prayer requests --

Health -- for me as I'm recovering from the cold, for the director of the center who I was told today is in the hospital
For the village -- the church sign went up this week at the building in the village, which is a praise! and also a prayer request. Please pray for more people in the village to be interested and for those with questions or concerns about who we are to have the opportunity to talk with us.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Photo update!

The last few weeks have been some of my busy weeks in the village for the summer -- we did a women's week, a children's VBS program, and a "creative" week for girls. I also went with the street kids on an outing to Pogradec, a nearby lake town.

I've really enjoyed spending time in the village! The pace there is different from Korçë - perhaps not slower, because there is always work to do, but in some way it seems quieter.

Here are some photos from the women's week. We had a "cocktail" (snacks and soda) each day and then shared a message or drama with them and did an activity -- hand sewing potholders, sharing recipes, making crocheted flowers. They loved this zucchini bread recipe!

On Thursday of that week, we had them do a craft show-and-tell and then there was some traditional dancing.



On Friday we took the women to Pogradec for a little outing and some swimming. We found some shade for a picnic.


Last week was "Sky" (or "Qielli" in Albanian) week in the village.  Each of the outreaches from the Korçë church has had their own Sky VBS week. We had a good turnout of kids - somewhere around 30 each day - and many of them were new faces.

Here are some photos from Sky -- most of my pictures are of the girls, since I was with the girls group :)








Here are a few of my favorite photos of taking the street kids to Pogradec --





I'll add some photos from this week soon!