School Shopping

Today we went school shopping…imagine 7 pre-teens all with their own ideas about what they like! It would be difficult enough to take them to the mall all at once but shopping in Freetown is an experience in itself. We started by walking to the closest market where we found backpacks. The staff kept telling me they were so expensive as I shelled out $5-$10 for each of them. "Auntie Cari, tell them in America to send for us some backpacks!" So here is my plea…send for us some backpacks! Every child at the center would LOVE to have one if it were possible. The ones we bought today were cheap for a reason! I will be impressed if they last until Christmas, but then again I might be surprised!

Then it was off to the center of town to buy shoes. We went to "payless" which was a block of shoe vendors with every type of used shoe imaginable. Mostly you look for your size first and then see if you like it. If you are lucky they might have 2 sizes of the same shoe but mostly you just wander until you happen upon something. So we shoe shopped for 3 hours. Eventually after what seemed like walking for miles we had 7 pairs of black shoes.

We eventually found underclothes, socks, and sweet n' condensed mild sandwiches to complete our shopping trip. The kids were so grateful and it was fun to shop with them. I was wishing we had done it one at a time though.

All this shopping made me think about 2 things…1^st, how isolated our kids are from the world around them. There was just as much new and interesting things for them to see and experience today as there were for me. They are being raised in a bubble, which is sweet and good for now, but how to we make sure that when they leave the bubble they can interact with their own culture and do simple things like going to the market and finding transport. These are things that parents teach their children mostly by example; so I will be looking for more ways to get the children outside of the bubble and into the world.

The other thing that truly struck me anew today is the amount of people in the world and God hears them all. This morning we had 30 adults in one room all praying out loud and to my ears it sounded like a horribly, chaotic mess and yet God hears every word of every person at every moment. Then in town the amount of people that are there selling and buying and going about their business was crazy…and God hears each of them and knows each one by name. It's not really a new thought, just one that made me stop and be grateful today that our God is big enough to hear all of us and know all of us and love all of us! WOW!