Lice, Lice, Go Away

Tuesday, August 4, 2009 (Day 25):

Today was a fast and furious day! Once we got to the home, we hit the ground running! We started off the day working with the 4-6 year old boys and girls. Julie started telling the kids the creation story. For the craft, the kids made little suns with rays and they drew in a little book. For the rest of the week, we are going to have the kids draw about the different parts of the creation story. We were working in the little school building for the 4-6 year olds and it was scorching hot in there. The sun actually made an appearance for most of the day too!! Wow, 3 days in a row of sunshine...not sure what we are going to do with ourselves!

After we hurriedly worked with the kiddos, we began our next mission. This proved to be a much bigger task than anticipated. We started shampooing the little 4-6 year old girls down with shampoo to get rid of the lice. We put on our gloves and started dousing the little girls heads with the shampoo. We probably shampooed around 30 little girls. One of the adult workers was even helping as well as some of the teen girls. Some of the older girls were coming over and putting the shampoo in their own hair. It is so heartbreaking to see because I know these girls have to be miserable. I cannot even fathom what it feels like to have lice in your hair all the time. Some of the girls had huge scabs on their scalp from where they had scratched their head so much. I helped rinse the shampoo out of the girls hair. It was craziness! All the other girls combed the dead lice out. At first we were rinsing the girls hair out with the water hose and that was taking forever. I think it took an hour and a half to rinse out maybe 4 girls hair. The water hose kept going off and then other girls would try to jump in too. All of a sudden, I thought about the showers. Why couldn't the girls shower and rinse their hair? The girls loved the shower! They all got undressed and started showering and playing in the water. They were having so much fun!!! All the little girls were running around giggling. One of my favorite all time sounds to hear are children giggling and that is what I heard while I was helping the girls rinse the shampoo out of their hair in their shower area. I had to get Julie in there to help me because once some of the girls were finished, they wanted to stay and play. I had a hard time figuring out who was finished and who wasn't, so I needed Julie to tell the girls to go get dressed instead of playing. After many hours, we finally finished rinsing the girls hair out. Sadly we were not able to finish combing the girls hair out. We did leave the combs for the workers to use. It still breaks my heart knowing that the girls will probably get lice again. At least they will have a little break from all the itching. One of the little girls actually told us how good it felt to have us scrubbing on her scalp. Tomorrow it is the boys turn. Hopefully it won't take as long!

After we ate our really late lunch, the 5th and 6th grade boys and girls were waiting for us. We sang songs and then I gave my testimony. All of the kids seemed to be very attentive. Of course, Julie grabs their attention really easily with her animation. When I was telling the kids about Jeremiah 29:11, I noticed one of the little girls that brought her Bible with her was looking for the verse. That really touched my heart. While Julie was telling the continuation to the Esther story, the girl opened up her Bible to Esther and was looking at it. I could tell that that precious girl is eager to learn more about God and His Word. Since our time was limited, we just let the kids work on a craft. They made mosaics. I mostly tried to entertain the younger kids that had come in to join us.

Honestly, I'm not really sure where the time went today. It flew by!!!! I can't believe that I'll be boarding a plane in 48 hours to head back to the States. It's bittersweet. I'm so excited to be coming home, but I'm also sad to leave these kids. Little Isabella from last week is still on my mind. I really want to go back and just hold her. Heck, if I could, I'd bring her back with me to the States!

Oh yeah, I saw the moon again tonight. Random, but exciting because I haven't seen it the whole time I've been down here...except for last night!

Thank you so much for your prayers and support!

Te amo,
Dawn

Forgot to tell you last night that we actually saw another sunset yesterday as the sun decided to peek out at the end of the day! When we were walking back from dinner, I just happened to look up and what did I see for the first time in a month, the moon and stars!!! The sky is nothing like the sky in Texas, but it was sure nice to see the moon and some stars!!