Church Kiddos

We have been worshipping at Andranomena Fiangonana (Red Water Church) for a while now and we really love it.  It's a small church in Tulear but seeing as how 85% of the church is kids it somehow fits perfectly with our expanding family.  One of my favorite parts is simply driving up to the church...I think it's beautiful.  The church is located in the middle of a huge field with a big tree right near it where the children meet for Sunday School and to practice their special songs for the service.

Ryleigh has become more independent and will just march right on in without us...of course all the while toting her Malagasy Bible...she's adorable.

The hardest part of church right now, for our family, is that once the songs are over the children run out to play ball (aka plastic bags tied up with a string).  Ryleigh wants to go out with them so much but there are various reasons as why this isn't very practical.

However, the Lord did start showing me a way to build relationships and allow Ryleigh time to have fun with these children...so this past Tuesday we drove to the church and got out with two new balls.  A truck, 2 white adults, a white child, and balls are each enough individually to draw a crowd, much less all together - so soon we had 7-10 kiddos coming to see what was going on.

The boys were delighted to find out the balls were indeed okay to play with and Ryleigh (thank you Lord!) did a great job of sharing.  I was able to meet and talk with 3 different ladies who also worship at Andranomena and get to know them a bit better.  I think this will become a weekly thing for us, in hopes that we'll be able to build stronger relationships with the nationals that we worship among and maybe there will be an opportunity to start a women's or children's bible study too!  Please be praying for this time on Tuesday mornings out at Andranomena!