I must admit, it’s been a while since I’ve had a tea party, but I got to have one last Saturday and it was lots of fun! J We were up at the soccer field and for some reason, we were having a hard time recruiting kids to play with us. So I went over to a little girl by the side of the field and asked if she wanted to play. She did, but she wanted to play volleyball instead! So, some of the girls played with her, while my eye caught a little figure up by a doorstep. I thought perfect…I’ll ask if they want to play. I got up there only to find out that the figure was a little four year old girl, named Jennifer, who loved to talk! (I could handle the conversations with this one!)
She was a bit too small to play, so I just sat and talked with her for a while. It was funny, because her mom called her and she said “I can’t come right now because I’m talking with a little white girl!” Her mom came out to investigate and we talked and then she went back inside. Meanwhile, quite a few of the neighborhood girls stopped by to just look and stare (this happens quite often) After a bit, Jennifer went back into her house and pulled out a big crate filled with toys. Most of the toys were “kitchen type” things, like a part of a pretend stove, a couple of plastic plates and cups and some utensils and a couple of baby dolls. So, I set up a little tea party. At first, I was the only one “eating and drinking” and feeding the babies. The other girls were just watching me and giggling, so I thought, “great, I look like a big dork right now!” After about five minutes of this, one of the girls reached over for a baby and then the party officially started. J We ate and drank, made sure the babies had plenty and then put them down for naps (one of the few Spanish words that I remember quickly 🙂
The girls then told me to look on the field and I saw the rest of our group sitting down, so I thought it might be time to leave soon. So, I told them good-bye and left and went across the field to join up with the rest of the group. I wasn’t there long when I heard a bunch of laughter and saw the seven girls coming across the field to see me…while doing somersaults! The guys were sharing the gospel with the boys that had joined them for soccer, so I and Alissa took the girls aside and Eduardo shared a Bible story with them and then we sang a song that has hand motions, which they loved. When we left, we didn’t know when we would see them again, but told them about the outreach in the plaza that night.
At seven, we were walking into town, when I heard a couple of “Anna, Anna’s”… and there were four of my tea party girls!! So, we went in and after a while sat down. I started rubbing the girl’s backs. The interesting thing was that I could only do two at a time and one of the girl seemed to kind of cringe when I first did it. However, one of the girls left at one point and she moved right away into that girls “spot” and stayed there for the rest of the night, so I just kept rubbing her back. It just shocked me, because at home, my sisters and I do that all the time to each other, and to think here that the little girl probably never got that before…has never been loved like that before, was hard. After Eric’s message, Alissa came over and lent a couple of hands to the back scratching campaign and we kept going over names to engrave them in our brains. 🙂 Sarah came over with her camera as well and we took a couple of pictures (kids love the digital cameras) and then we gathered all the kids up (probably around 40) and lead them in a bunch of songs. All of my girls hugged me good-bye at the end of the night (even the quieter ones) and asked when we will see them again, which was cute. Hopefully, we will be able to catch up with all of them this Saturday at the community outreach again! And hopefully there will be more tea parties in the coming days!! 🙂
