hangin' with the street kids of Kigali

We enjoyed good times with the boys who live on the street here in Kigali again today. It was good to see familiar faces and be greeted by name by some of the boys. We had fun with jump ropes, basketballs, beach balls...

Megan was mobbed by kids as she began to pull out some scarves to play with...

Rachel demonstrated her "juggling"....

Judy found some cuts and scrapes to bandage up...

We served a maize (type of corn) flour porridge that was piping hot and looked quite a bit like our Cream of Wheat. They all lined up nicely for the first round of porridge and ran quickly for seconds when they were available.

These guys have a squirrely streak for sure. They simply love getting their picture taken -- they pose with the most serious faces and erupt into giggles when we show them their pictures. And then we tried more pictures, asking them to "seca" - smile!

Posed look:

With a smile:

Posed look:

Loving the maize flour porridge for breakfast:

During the "church" portion of the morning, we heard a beautiful story. One boy (pictured below in the white shirt) had recently stolen a camera from ANLM staff. He quickly ran off and sold it to a "middleman". ANLM staff was able to track down that is was him who had stolen the camera and confronted him: the camera was returned and the boy felt terrible about what he had done. The beautiful part is that instead of turning him into the police for what he had done, ANLM staff forgave him. He was able to share his story to all the kids this morning: what a picture of God's forgiveness!