.Kid's Club Chaos.

It has been awhile since I last posted. I have lots of other things I could tell you about, but I think I will continue with my D.R. trip for now.

Journal entry from July 13, 2011:

Today didn't start off that great. After breakfast we piled in the buses. One for construction and one for Kid's Club. I was feeling ok about it, but then the buses starting moving. We got about 100 yards down the driveway and we were stopped again. What in the world?!

We look forward and the driver of the first bus walks to the back of his bus and opens what I would have called the trunk. Well that's where the motor is... and it wasn't running. The first bus was toast. The men had to push that bus out of the way so that our bus, the second bus, could pass it on the driveway.


But - before they did that, DeLise come on the bus and said that half of the kids club people had to get off and they would be replaced with half of the construction crew. This did not make any sense to me. So the rest of the people would have to wait as the bus drove us an hour to LaRepresa, an hour for the bus to come back and yet again, another hour to LaRepresa. That meant that by the time the rest of the team arrived - Kid's Club would be over! This is when I started to panic. It didn't make any sense. Why would we send two 'half teams' and [pardon my french] half ass both projects?! We all thought that it would have made more sense to send all the construction people and postpone Kid's Club until noon - or vice versa.

But, we were off. Without Joelle or Sandy. Once we got to LaRepresa (only 15 minutes late) the kids started cheering as we walked toward the church. It was neat to see them so excited. The first thing we did was play games. Dan taught them a game that they loved!

One side of the road was "Americana" and the other was "Republica Dominicana". They had to run and touch the building on whatever side of the road he called. If you were already on the American side and that's what he called - anyone who left the wall would be out. The kids had such a great time playing this game and it was a lot of fun watching them, but the road was gravel and pretty uneven, so we did have a few kids wipe out.

Dan leading games!

After awhile they added a third country into the mix. Matt H. stood just a little down the street and he was "Puerto Rico". So now the kids were running in three directions. At one point Dan yelled Puerto Rico and they all turned toward Matt, but he took off running! So the kids all chased 'Puerto Rico' down the street! :)

The kids chasing "Puerto Rico" :)

Ben hanging out with some of the kids.

They played a few ore games before it was time to go inside and sing some songs. This was my least favorite part of Kid's Club. Our translator, Melissa, did an awesome job with the kids. But they were so loud! There was about 75 kids and they were all screaming the words so loud, and some of the boys were just pounding on the drums! Now maybe it's because I had an ear infection to begin with, but all of that noise in a tiny cement sanctuary was just too much to handle. I could tell Isaiah felt the same way. He sat away from the crowd just holding his ears and I stood near them and tried to get a few pictures, but I too just had to plug my ears most of the time.

Singing!

Finally, after about 4-5 songs it was time for our skit. Everything went great with that. Yemi read it in English and another translator, Danny, told it to the kids in Spanish. They all seemed genuinely interested and like they were having a good time. After the skit, three of the teens went over the memory verse several times. After they did this and let some of the kids say it, Danny then turned over the poster and asked if anyone could remember it. Surprisingly, one little girl could recite it back to him. That was awesome!

Jackie, Sola and Matt teaching the memory verse.

Kids watching the skit.

Last, we did the crafts. What a nightmare. We had one kit for everyone. They had two (pre-hole punched) paper plates that they had to flip one upside down on top of the other. They lined up the holes and then 'stitched' them together with two ribbons. Right before they were all the way around the plates, we used the small opening they had remaining and dumped about a 1/4 Cup of beads inside. Then they finished 'stitching' and tied off the ribbons so they each had a "tambourine". Finally, they used glue dots to stick on a cut out of a tambourine that said "Will you stand firm when the music plays?" (in Spanish).

Working hard on his 'tambourine'!

Finished product

This phrase related to our skit which was about Shadrach, Meshach and Abendago. They refused to bow down before King Nebuchadnezzar's golden statue when cued by musicians, so they got thrown in the fiery furnace. Anyway, things started winding down - and that's when I made a huge mistake. Kid's started asking for a craft kit for their sisters, brothers, cousins - whoever. And me, figuring - "Well we only had maybe 80 kids max - we brought supplies for 250. We don't want to bring them back on the plane... Why not?"



Well, this is why not: I opened the suitcase and kids started swarming! Grabbing from everywhere! One little girl took 5 and then wanted more. It started getting too crazy. I closed up the suitcase and said "No mas!" - No more - One of the Dominican mothers saw what was happening and came over to back me up. She yelled something in Spanish and then turned and said "Lo siento" to me - I' Sorry. After she left, still the kids came. Asking "Uno? Por mi hermana?" - "No mas." was all they got.

I hated that it ended this way. They were ecstatic that they had one - but after just a few minutes they were leaving sad because they didn't have six. It was chaos. They even tried getting my other team members to get them one. They would bring someone over, point to the suitcase and ask. Not all of my team knew what had happened, so I stepped in and made sure no one else tried to open that suitcase, in which World War 3, decorated in ribbon and beads would then coming flying out. We live and we learn, I guess.

Once we got all cleaned up from Kid's Club we had to walk back over to the school (our construction site). It seemed like a couple miles away. Some of the kids followed us all the way there. As we were approaching the school, so was the second bus full of our crew. We all immediately jumped in and let the morning construction crew go eat. They had literally been working all morning because there were not enough people to rotate or fill in for breaks. Everyone was always busy.

Somehow I survived Kid's Club. I'm not sure how. But I know I'll never volunteer to be in charge of that again!