Clowning Around

Okay, as some of you might know in Mexico the people celebrate everything from the day of their independence to the birthday of some famos governor or other. Kind of crazy, but it gets worse, in addition to having a Mothers' day and a Fathers' day here they also have what's called "Dia de los Niños" (kids' day) which is celebrated on the 30th of April. Well anyway as a tradition the church always throws a big party for al the kids (kind of like the equivelent of a harvest festival in the States). Just to give you a little bit of an idea on how crazy this party always is I have to tell you a little about the kids... Since we live in a small fishing village the mentality of the people is very different. Most of the fathers in the village are drunks and those who aren't are working so hard to take care of their families that they're never around. This unfortunatelly makes for kids who have very little dicipline (if any) and no respect. This in mind I think you'll now be able to understand my explanation of the party. Karen, Mavil (there isn't a picture of her solo, I couldn't catch her before she changed, but she is in the picture above if you look) and I were asked to dress up as clowns and run the games and all that jazz. I agreed thinking it would be fun. Now, honestly it wasn't all that bad, but it was not as much fun as I thought it would be. We started off with a few songs and then followed the games. This part was one of the craziest. First off we couldn't get the kids to be quiet enough to hear the instructions for the games, when we'd finally get them to calm down and we'd explained the game all of them would start leaping up and yelling for us to pick them. We tried telling them that we weren't going to pick those who weren't sitting down quietly in their seats, but I guess they didn't understand or if they did they didn't care. After the games Diego (he's one of the students in the school) told a the story about Jesus calming the storm and then had the kids memorize a verse. After that we played one more game and then we all went outside to hit the piñata (this is another tradition in Mexico, no matter what you're celebrating you should always have a piñata). When the piñata was ripped to shreds and the mad dive for the candy was over we passed out the bags of candy to all the kids. I think the final count of the kids who showed up was around 130 (kind of funny that in a fishing village that has only 500 inhabitants there would be so many kids, and this is only 13 and under!). Afterward, Karen and I were left to clean the church (which was a definate mess) and then change back into our clothes. I think both of us yelled ourselves hoarse. But even though it wasn't the most fun experience I've ever had it was nice to be able to bless the kids and hopefully we've been able to impact some of their lives. Only God knows!!