Getting in touch with your inner child in Rwanda!

· Creating mud from the earth: using a hoe to loosen the dirt/clay and mixing water
· Playing in the mud hole… making mud balls with our hands
· Getting gooey mud on our gloves, or with no gloves, deeply into our hands and fingernails, looking at it with curiosity, feeling its cool texture against one’s palms, and smiling

· Slapping smaller parts of that mud ball against the side of the house [like throwing ripe tomatoes up against a barn!]
· Putting lots of mud into a ‘form’ to make a 30 pound mud pie!
· Getting ‘down and dirty’, messy and getting even more messy
· Playing and singing with others – “Hokey Pokey”, “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”, “Iyo Mana Nzizi”, lots of ‘oldies’ and more

· Reciting our “ABC’s” and “Numbers”
· Slapping cement onto the mud walls and laughing as the wet cement splatters all overthe place and on one another
· Lots of laughter… and even more laughter
· Playing ‘Fooootball’ [soccer], baseball, catching and running after the balls that got away
· Skipping, dancing and singing while holding hands


· Hugging, smiling & more laughter

· Eating Dum-Dums and loving those sweets, more dancing and singing
· Reaching out to touch and hold someone’s hand, to experience the feeling of white skin next to black skin, to embrace another tentatively one moment and with abandon in next moment -- giving and receiving love unconditionally

“Truly, I tell to you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3
"...Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs." Matthew 19:14

We were blessed to enjoy the many ways we connected with the children and they connected with us. And as we shared these times with one another, we experienced the joy of being unencumbered and childlike ourselves. And perhaps in those shared moments we caught just a tiny glimpse of heaven right here on earth.
Peace, Stacy