Thirty kids showed up, along with our translator Omena (Lokwii Paul). It took a while to "mobilize" (i.e. shout back into the village and tell kids to come). While Erika walked around calling for kids, I stayed in the ward and visited with the ones who were already there. I know enough Karamojong now to scrape by a small conversation (Hi! How are you? What is your name? What is your sisters name? My name is Ngakiru Emily. etc.). I tried to get all their names, but the names here are so unfamiliar to me that I had a hard time with that... but there are a few kids that are very familiar to me now, and will greet me and Erika by name if they see us walking around. Samuel, Lokiru, Sagal David, Abra, Losike, Longoli, Soki, Tony, Baby Bob, and Achio are the ones I know the best, and we love to visit them and talk to them. I'll keep working on learning more names over the next few weeks.
We sang a few songs first. Some are classic kid songs here:
Amina, amina, amina
Epol amina,
Ejok amina,
Kristo erae amina.
Love, love love,
Love is great,
Love is good,
Christ is love.
Kire ejok Akuj,
Kire ejok Akuj,
Kire ejok Akuj,
Nooi, nooi ejok Akuj!
Surely God is good,
Surely God is good,
Surely God is good,
God is very, very good!
Oh, Oh, Oh Yesu ikimina iwon!
Aleluya!
Oh, Oh, Oh Yesu ikimina iwon!
Oh, Oh, Oh Jesus loves us!
Aleluya!
Oh, Oh, Oh Jesus loves us!
Omena also led the kids in a song they requested that I've never heard before. It's not in our Karamojong songbook, so I'm not quite sure how all the kids know it, but they sang it very enthusiastically. The only part of the song I understood was "Satan", which was mentioned several times...
Then Omena told the kids the Christmas story using a tract the missionaries have been using for the past month. He is a great teacher - he went to Bible college and the missionaries are training him for church leadership. He asked the kids lots of questions and they answered well, and they also practiced memorizing John 3:16. Martha Wright, who came along to observe, handed out the Christmas story booklets to all the children who were in school and could read. Only a handful could out the group of thirty, but when she was going around asking the kids "Can you read?" many of them said "Not yet!" They want to learn, which is encouraging.
After the lesson, we brought the kids outside to play Duck Duck Goose. I took the younger kids group (mostly toddlers and preschoolers who had no idea what they were doing) and Omena advised me to use the words "Ane, Ane, Akine" instead of Duck Duck Goose. I still don't know what those words mean, but in any case we had fun, even if we did kinda bend the rules. They didn't know how to play and the only useful word I knew was "atipei" which means quickly, so I pretty much just let them walk around, pat heads, and then if they whispered "akine" or just started running randomly, I would point to the kid sitting and say atipei! It worked ok... many of them were laughing. The littlest guys just looked totally confused. One little girl, Abra, is so chubby she couldn't run (chubbiness is very uncommon here.... she must eat a lot of porridge) -- she just waddled around looking mystified. It was pretty adorable though.
Finally, we decided it was time to go. Martha wanted a picture of us with all the kids, which they got quite excited about. Hopefully I'll be able to post that picture on here at some point. We kept saying, "it's time to go!" but they didn't want to go, they were clinging on to us and started spontaneously singing Yesu Ikimina Iwon, which was so sweet. We finally managed to detach ourselves, point the kids home, and say goodbye.
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