Gifts! Gifts! Gifts!

I mentioned that we were presented with gifts on our arrival to Magome and then again at the Sunday service. We received another gift at Magome's preaching point. Of course, we gave gifts as well. During the Sunday service, we gave each church elders a t-shirt or sweatshirt. Then we gave two of the hand made quilts to the pastor to distribute along with most of the knitted child hats, baby hats and baby blankets. Whoever worked on those, your hard work was very much appreciated! We distributed most of the hand made dolls, beanie babies and red balls on Sunday to the children and most of the baseball hats to the adult parishioners.

We saved two quilts, and about 1/3 of all the rest of the items and took them to Magome's preaching point - which we went to on Monday. They were appreciated there as well. A picture of us distributing hats at the preaching point is below.

Our final gift to the pastor and the parish was a series of solar lights. J.R. and David installed a set of three small solar lights in Pastor Peter's living room (where we ate all our meals) before the Sunday night meal. Everyone was very impressed - no need for a kerosene lamp to see by.

On Monday, we installed four solar powered spot lights in the church to light up the altar for evening service or meetings. On the four light, we installed a switch, so they could turn them on and off - that way the lights don't shine all night long and make people think they are missing an event. We took the other small lights and installed one set in Pastor Peter's office so he might be able to do some night work, another set went outside his office in the gathering space. The final set of small lights went back into Pastor Peter's office to light the hallway, the backyard and his bedroom. The bedroom one had a switch. It was a lot of work, but J.R. and David had a lot of local help. The trickiest part of the whole operation was mounting the solar panels on top of the church. J.R. climbed up on the roof using a home made ladder and crawled across the tin roof to get to the peak. Below is a picture of J.R. at work on top of the church.
Lastly, we donated a variety of medical supplies to the village. Before donating the supplied, Sandy held two short first aid classes with Lori's help - one at night under the lights in the church. After both classes, Sandy, Shirley and Mary Lou set up a dispensary with all the medical supplies in an open room next to the pastor's office.

More later - off to the orphanage...