are Indian kids the cutest kids ever?

maybe it's just because I have the pleasure of knowing the beautiful kids :-)

a few photos from India...

after a little photoshopping :-)

India 2010!

Hello everyone! This may have been a long time coming but... I'm going to India again! I had the pleasure of going to INDIA for the first time with a YWAM (Youth With A Mission) team in January 2006. We stayed and worked with an orphanage in the city of Pune for a month. During that month, we helped get the kids ready for school, shared meals, helped with homework, taught Bible lessons, made crafts, played games, and sang songs. We did this at least 5 days a week. With that much time with the kids it was very hard to leave them. It was about a 4 hour drive from the orphanage to the airport and most of cried, at least, half way there. A few of the girls from the team were already trying to figure out when they could come back. I'd just say that if God wanted me to come back, I would.

Fast-forward 4 years later and I think GOD IS CALLING ME BACK. This past December, a friend of mine invited me to go with her team in January and, to my surprise, my heart was like "YES! I want to go!" Yes, I wanted to go but I was unable. About a week before that call, I had met with Patty Bauman (who works with YWAM and Streams of Mercy) to chat about what I was doing next. Since I didn't know what I was doing next, Patty shared, among many things, some of their thoughts and plans for India. She started me thinking so we met again, and again, and pretty soon, we were planning a trip to India.

This is kind of a SCOUTING TRIP to visit several different ministries in the Pune area. I've known, for a while,  that I want to use art and maybe work with kids and/or young people. There is a rescue and restore house for former prostitutes that we are looking to teach them how to make jewelry. I would love to use the knowledge that I have for creating jewelry to help get them started. We will also be doing an art project with a children's home for kids who have been taken in from the streets.

Patty with a group that we will work

Part of MY HEART for wanting to go is to bring art and creativity to children. On my first trip to India we were able to bring crafts for the children at the orphanage and the street kids. It was so wonderful seeing their faces light up with the simplest of crafts. I was very blessed to come from a creativity-encouraged home with the funds to provide the supplies. I want to bring this opportunity to the children of India.

HOW YOU CAN HELP: I need $2200 for airfare, boarding, and food. I am going with a small team and we will be there for about 9 days. I would also ask for prayer. I feel like this trip to going to help me determine my next step. I see that God is leading me to India and I want to know exactly what He had planned for me there and for this next season.

CONTACT: If you are interested in supporting me financially or have more questions on the trip, please leave a comment or email me: craftykellyjo@yahoo.com

Me and David on my first trip 4 years old

i don't wanna grow up...

if you read my last blog, you would know that this past week, i worked as a teacher's assistant for an art class for 1st the 5th grade kids. here are just 3 of the kids with their dioramas...

a week of art and kids...

this week, it's winter break and i've been working as a teacher's assistant for the Creative Arts Workshop. (i've taking some classes with them before) 9am to 3pm with 10 kids from the 1st to 5th grade. now, i thought that i was pretty patient with kids but i've come to realize that i'm more patient with little kids, like 3 to 5 year olds - that's the age i work with on Sundays. With the little kids at church, you can do almost everything for and that's what they need. But these older kids want to do most things for themselves, but they don't think or listen and you still have to watch (some of them) almost the whole time. it's extremely tiring. But then today, after they all left, i was still cleaning up the mess that we told them to clean up and i discovered that one of the girls had been writing on the chalk board and left us a little message: "Nellie and Kelly are great. They teach good art." (Nellie is the teacher) Well, i just had to laugh! :-) I love working with kids! :-)

one thing that makes me sad about this week though is: I haven't been able to be crafty. i'm too busy helping the kids, i only get a few random moments to actually create. Today we were working on cut-outs, and here's mine...

read my lips: n-o....

So, i live with a great family, The Harke's. (plus The Clark's) The Harke's has 3 awesome kids, Olivia (5), Silas (3), and Cora (almost 1). Tonight, I witnessed Cora's first 'argument' with her mom. Cora, as most kids, loves to get into everything! One of her favorites is the kids plastic plates and bowls. Ricci (her mom) doesn't mind her doing it but she does leave quite the mess. So tonight, after Cora tore through all the plastic ware and got bored, Ricci cleaned up. Then Cora made her way back and noticed that the floor looked too bare and decided to get the plates again. As she reach for the basket, Ricci said, "Cora! No!" Cora looked right up at Ricci, screeched, and started pulling out the plates. Once again, Ricci told Cora to stop and she (Cora) did the same thing: screeched and grabbed another plate. It was such a defiant little screech for a 1 year old. She can't even talk and she already knows how to say no.

1 fish, 2 fish, red fish, blue fish...

On Sunday i had a chance to go to the famous (at least here in Connecticut) Mystic Aquarium. Here are some pictures of the lovely animals...

last week...

This past week was pretty mellow for me. Which is what I needed. The week before was great just extremely busy. Also, we had a team of 5 ladies from the states, living in our house which already had 8 females. That was 12 females using 1 bathroom (Lynn just shared hers with Rich). Everything worked out alright, sometimes there wasn’t quite enough hot water but you work with what you got. The team that came in was fun and we kept them really busy with local outreach opportunities. The team brought with them a plethora of toys and activities for the kids…

the company that one of the ladies worked for donated a bunch of stamping stuff. the kids really liked it and she left it all with us so we can continue to take it out to the different groups that we work with...

the kids REALLY loved the play-doh that the ladies brought from the states. you can't buy it here...

jenga. who knew you could have so much fun with wooden blocks...

the team brought footballs, soccer balls, and bouncy balls too...

there was a dentist on the team and she was able to give a couple of presentations on tooth care. Plus she had toothbrushes and paste to pass out to the kids...

mix it up...

This was a week full of local outreach. We had a speaker, a very good speaker. But there were several opportunities for different outreach locations so I took advantage of them. Wednesday we started the morning with a farm school; it’s a school out in the bush for local children (sometimes kids of farmers). We have a team from the states with us for 2 weeks, so they came. One of the women is a dentist so she spoke to the kids about their teeth.
At the end we got to pass out tooth brushes and toothpaste.

They didn’t speak much English but who needs English when you have Play-doh and Jenga!

After lunch, we went to an after school program. The kids actually spoke English pretty well so we were able to play some different games with them. Heidi and Kathryn taught them Surfer/Chick/Wave – it’s like rock/paper/scissors only it’s interactive. The kids really seemed to like it.

Next we played Tag – or Touch as they call it. They definitely liked that!

On Thursday, our regular place fell through because the after-school program was canceled. None of the kids showed up because of the holiday weekend. So we found another opportunity in another town. It’s only suppose to be about 45 minutes away, but there’s construction going on and we were told it could take an hour and a half. And that’s about how long it took! Good bonding experience. When we got there the kids were SO happy to see us! They up on some music and showed us their dance moves. They were good too! Then we split up the kids and took the younger kids inside to play with Play-doh, which they liked. Heidi and Kathryn tried to teach them Surfer/Chick/Wave but it didn’t go over so well. So they started playing relay races with the DTS students. After all the games, they put on the music again and this time it was our turn to show off. Right. They kept pulling us into the circle to bust a move. I was very reluctant but I did, but a made another girl come with me. :-) Unfortunately, I left my camera in the car....

HIV testing...

This week’s local outreach was on Monday and Tuesday. We worked with a local ministry that goes to schools and offers HIV testing for the students. I think the youngest we tested was 9, but if they are younger than 13 they had to have a consent form signed by their parents. If, by chance, the child is HIV positive, they don’t tell them right then. They first meet with the parents and tell them before telling the child. But at the school, they teach the classes about AIDS and HIV and tell them to ‘fear the blood’- to never touch someone else’s blood. It was a good experience. There was enough of us (staff and students) to man the tents and to play with the kids when they were on break.
The school was huge and we had our tents set up in the ‘playground’ area. That meant that on breaks there was a FLOOD of kids! And I mean a flood. The kids really enjoyed coping whatever you were doing, like Simon Says or Follow the Leader. And since only a few of the older kids spoke a little English, we used a lot of games and songs with hand-motions.

The first day went really well. It was rather hot, but none of the kids tested positive. Unfortunately, on Tuesday, 2 kids tested positive. One of the kids was 14, the other was 10. When they meet with the parents, they instruct them to go take the child to get tested at the clinic where they actually draw blood for the test. The test that they use for the schools only requires a few drops and sometimes (very rarely) has false positives or false negatives. I pray that the kids that tested positive were one of the false positives.

photos...

Here's the photos that i tried to post on my last blog...

it was a good day...

Thursday ended up being a better day than I thought it would. :-) It’s one of the days that we have local outreach. Not that I don’t like local outreach, it’s just this particular place wasn’t quite my ‘cup of tea’ last week when we visited. It was fine; I got involved; I had fun. But you see, it’s an after-school program for teenage boys - the one ‘kid-group’ that I don’t work very well with. It’s SO easy for me to play with little kids; girls or boys. And I can handle teenage girls for you see, I have 3 younger sisters; only 1 younger brother. So, I wasn’t quite looking forward to this week. But as we were preparing our game plan that morning, I started getting my priorities right and I started getting excited for the afternoon with the kids. I kept reminding myself, ‘it’s not about you’. :-) I forget sometimes. As a team, we put together a sketch (drama) and decided to break up into small groups to discuss the sketch with the kids. Then we had a game for the end. So when we got to the school, we found out that we would have the boys and the girls for the program! That’s how outreach goes. :-) Anyhoo, the day went really well. The sketch went great, the teenage girls in my discussion group understood the point of the sketch, and all of the kids loved the game. All in all, it was a good day...

i was going to posts some pictures from the day, but this lousy internet cafe isn't letting me...