Jillian and I headed out toward Hamilton on Friday morning to catch a bus to go to an orphanage in Tauranga. It was really exciting! We had never taken a bus trip before so we didn’t really know what to do exactly. We had a layover about 1/4 of the way to Tauranga and our first bus was already 20 minutes behind schedule. But our bus driver confirmed with us that the second bus would wait for us. It was a cool experience.
We arrived in Tauranga at about 12:10 pm and Shani’s sister, Erika, picked us up to go eat lunch. After lunch we got dropped off in small shopping section of Tauranga where we had a little over an hour to kill. The whole time I kept wandering what we were going to be doing at the orphanage. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I kept thinking that we’d only be there for 4 hours and then we’d never see the kids again. Can we really do anything to significantly impact these kids lives?
1.5 hours later, Shani picks us up to bring us to the orphanage which was only about 3 blocks from where we were walking around. The others are already there. Shani had just dropped them off before coming to pick Jillian and me up. As soon as we got there, we just jumped right in and started playing with the kids. It was so much fun! 4 hours of trampoline, water balloon fights, water gun fights, soccer, bikes, basketball, sidewalk chalk, and so much more. It was such a good break from our normal cleaning and painting back at Narrows Park.
