Love casts out fear

"Be comforted, dear soul! There is always light behind the clouds."

On Saturday I was thrilled to hear of a laundry machine in the church (washing a few articles in a bucket in the bathroom was not only taking awhile but was producing questionably clean clothing). There was a slight power outage blip but I managed to get it done. While I was hanging my clothing to dry outside a group of about 15 teenagers came through (it looked like they were touring the church) and they all stopped and stared at me for a solid couple of minutes as I hung up my clothing. I was like "HELLO EVERYONE!" and thinking to myself watch me as I hang my underwear! Oh brother. I managed to find a somewhat secluded place to practice yoga and meditate for a bit. The boys played in a basketball tournament at the church which was interesting indeed! People were just pulling up on their motorbikes or bicycles to watch. I don't know anything about basketball, but I know there were definitely some rules broken in this game and it wasn't entirely fair! But we were good sports. We had the other team over for dinner (there were like 40 people!) so it took us quite a while to set all the tables. There are some photos up on Instagram (some really cute ones of the kids at the game).

On Sunday afternoon we went to visit an ethnic minority community close by. We played with the little kids and gave them candy (and I took a ton of photos). I was having a sad day and they definitely lifted my spirits. I loved hanging out with the little girls, brushing their hair with my hand, hugging them and showing them my camera. It started to downpour while we were there but that didn't stop a lot of the kids! They played around barefoot in the mud as giant puddles turned into small ponds. Pretty soon they were entirely soaked through, but they kept going! They were doing cartwheels, rolling around, walking on their hands, doing flips - little gymnasts and breakdancers in the making! We waited for the rain to stop but it never did, so we had a wet motorbike ride home before dinner. I didn't mind. It felt nice to ride past the rice paddies in the rain with cute little kids yelling "GOOD-BYE!" as we drove away.

Time to get ready for week three of classes!