Here’s a brief excerpt from Jamey & Lesley Smith’s latest update. The Smiths are former NLCFers who are now working with our sister church in Danli, Honduras:
There is a very important day that comes around every September for the sweet children of Honduras. That day is National Children’s Day, and it is taken very seriously! But who wouldn’t want a reason to celebrate the wonderful kids that we are blessed to have at the Danli CDI? I (Lesley) have been planning for this day for over a year – ever since I found out about the holiday last year – by saving materials, ideas, gifts, prizes, anything super fun that we were given was automatically tucked away for this day. So for the first time ever, my students had these things in addition to their piñata and cake (which is all they normally have). Students from the communities we work in had never even heard of having raffle prizes like soccer jerseys and Barbie dolls, and had never each received a full gift baggie to take home no matter how much or how little candy they were able to collect from the piñata. They were absolutely amazed at the amount of work their teachers put in to their party and genuinely grateful.
But before we started all of the fun, we made sure to take a moment and explain why we have this day in Honduras; most of our kids just knew it was a day but had never thought about why someone would throw a party in honor of it. We explained to them how much we love each one of them individually no matter what. We know each of them by name and we had prepared a table with each of their names on it, just like the Lord knows them inside and out, each by name, and loves them unconditionally. We wanted to throw the best party we could so that they would know just how much they are loved.
In other wonderful news of the Danli Children’s Development Center, three of our kids have recently received new beds of their own and two new students entered the program this month. Praise the Lord! Also, the Danli CDI Facebook page has recently been significantly updated with dozens of new pictures from both this year and last school year. We hope you can check it out and enjoy!