Elephants at Your Service

On Thursday we enjoyed a morning full of schools!  We visited the hospital school first and spent some time in the K5 class.  There are 62 kindergartners in that class!  Can you imagine?  But these students sit quietly at their desks and are very cooperative with the teacher. – it was very impressive!  They sang a couple of cute songs with hand motions and then we sang a couple of songs.   Morgan and Ethan led us in singing Tomlin’s song “How Great…” with sign language.  Afterwards, we passed out goodie bags to each child.  They received a silly band, Play-Doh, glow stick, 2 pencils, and an eraser.  We had to show them how the glow stick worked and tell them that it would only last a day, “But oh, how beautiful it is for that one day!”  They loved it.  Then we had to be sure they understood that the Play-Doh is not food.  Thankfully, one of the full-timers came to help us thoroughly communicate that message.

We then walked over to a fishing village.  (For those of you who have been here, we left through the Khal gate, climbed up the cliff, walked the rim of the cliff by the lumber mill, down the other side of the cliff into a rice paddy, and then up another steep hill into a poor, poor village.)  This school is for children who are too poor to attend a government school.  The coolest thing about this opportunity was that a “sister”  from Chabagan is ministering there by teaching them every day.  She has a class of about 25 students and she teaches them all about Him.  It is a Hindu village but they are so happy their children are learning to read and write that they don’t mind the other messages.  This school also sang a couple songs for us and we sang for them in return.  When we started pulling out our gifts, people started coming from all the nearby homes to get one for themselves.  The kids had an eye-opening experience as they saw Bengali women pushing their children forward with their hands outstretched to get a gift.  The women also pushed and shoved each other saying that their some of their children were home sick and wouldn’t get one if we didn’t give it to them.  Morgan caught some hiding gifts in their saris while reaching out for more and claiming they hadn’t received one yet.  It was pretty overwhelming for the kids.  I think we have it all on video, but it was a good demonstration of the spiritual needs.  I praise Him for this special Bengali woman who is using this village as her place of outreach.

We wrapped up the morning by going to the MK school and enjoying a little St. Patrick’s Day Party (since St. Pat’s Day falls on the weekend).  One of the full-time moms had put together a little scavenger hunt that led to little gift bags of candies and juices.  The Carlson’s had pre-prepared exactly 16 bags of Lucky Charms for St. Patrick’s Day while back in the USA, having no idea that in addition to our 8 kiddos there would be exactly 8 MK children.  HE is amazing!  We enjoyed cookies and homemade salty crackers (YUM!  I had totally forgotten about those!!! I was excited to have them again!)  Then we sat around chatting with the MKs and they asked me for stories of when I was a kid…what kind of fun things did we do…did I have any good ideas for pranks…etc.  Oh boy, was I ever able to give them some tips!

We had lunch at the hospital mess (chicken curry) and it was AWESOME.  It had just the right amount of kick in it.  Blake has been fighting a cold and not feeling great but that curry did a better job than any Sudafed could’ve done!

Rest time was next where we tried to get a little school done but the dads messed that up by taking the kids on dirt bike rides through the rice paddies.  Then we got a message to meet down in  Hollywood Bowl ASAP.   (Just a large land “bowl” on the compound where we have a soccer field, basketball court, picnic area, etc.)  The grownups knew what was coming but the children thought we were just taking another walk up to the hospital.

Pretty soon, around the corner from House One comes 2 hatis (elephants).  These were specially ordered by Dr. Kelley for our children to ride!!!  They were so excited to see them and to hear that they were going to ride them.  The kids (and any grownups who wanted to) were able to take multiple rides on the two elephants and we spent the afternoon taking oodles of pictures.  It was so great so see the kids’ excitement.   Dr. Kelley is our new hero – he made our Bangladesh trip complete.

Alley-Oop!  Everyone climbs on (some need a little help even though they are 15 years old).

And then you hold on for dear life as the elephant stands up!

My 5 terrific kids have thoroughly enjoyed my childhood home.
I’m so thankful I was able to share it with them and
re-create some amazing memories I have for them to enjoy as well.

We took a dip in the pool after that, came home for showers because worship was the next day, had a curry dinner again (YUM!) at the Weldy’s home with several other people, then enjoyed a movie night at the GH to watch Courageous.  You’ve never seen such a huge bowl of popcorn!  And it was fun to watch the movie with a room full of people who hadn’t seen it yet.

All-in-all…it was a good day and a FULL day.  We are so blessed and so thankful.