Books!

 There are few things in life better than a good book. Perhaps one better thing is sharing a good book with someone else. I love to gift people with books I think they would enjoy. When I am an old lady, I am going to put a rocking chair in the children's section of the library and sit in it every day reading books to children and talking to them about what they are reading. 

Our children at Ddembe have been blessed over the years to receive books from us. We have typically taken extras that people had, and frequently the thin ones that we get for free because they don't take up a lot of weight in our luggage.  The children were so interested in the few nonfiction books (Chick-fil-A gave away great ones) we had that I decided to focus a lot of our luggage space on books this year, and be purposeful about asking for the ones I knew they would love. Mission Possible Kids at Oak Hill UMC, and Molly's third grade teacher, Mrs. Waldron, gave me TONS of books that were the perfect interest and reading level for our kids!  Lindsay Rerecich suggested the Anna Hibiscus series and the No 1 Car Spotter books, and that got me excited about finding more stories that our kids could relate to! We ended up coming with three specific books per child-- one non-fiction science book, one story about a child in Africa, and one other African book. I put labels in the front of each book telling the children why I had chosen that particular book for them. We also brought a ton more books for them to share and read. We have been bringing out some books every night and the kids are loving it!  They say things like, "HOW DID THEY KNOW US?!"  They are making predictions about what will happen, laughing at the funny parts, and looking at all the details in the illustrations. They can barely sit through the "Who Would Win?" book series (like lion vs tiger), because they just really want to know who would win!  In fact, now, when they see photos of two animals in other books, they always ask, "ah!  Who would win??!"  Little Moses clapped each time Kojo's farm grew during the story One Hen.  Yonna is reading every single sight word book, and considering that he didn't know his letters last year, we are celebrating every page!  

At school, the children have no textbooks, so they copy every diagram from the board. Seeing those same diagrams of insects and flowers in color and with real pictures is a complete novelty to them. Emma asked me, "how do they get all these photos for the book?" They keep exclaiming when they see pictures of outer space, and Moses (the child) asked me, "doesn't it disturb God when we rocket to the heavens?"  What a fantastic time to talk about how big God's creation really is!  

Books are magical!  Thank you to everyone who helped share that magic with our kids!!! We are leaving them over 100 books!