The votes are in and counted (It was not hard since there were only 7 votes). The overwhelming winners were stories about the students/teachers and the open forum for my fictional writing. We are going to start off with stories about students.

I put a group of names into a basket and drew one out. Beatrice is our first student for me to truly introduce you to. Beatrice is currently in our Standard 1 class and joined the school sometime in the 2019 school year.

Beatrice was one of our “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth” kids I wrote about during the Christmas Gift handouts. She got her wish and her teeth are coming back in.

Beatrice is a student who occasionally makes it into the top three students including placing first at least once. She normally never falls below 6th out of 34 students. Placement is important to Tanzanians, but I look at the fact she is a straight “A” based on the USA grading system.

While she is not one of more hyperactive students she still loves to play on the new playground equipment or to just run around. I think she will be a big fan of the new slides we are installing thanks to the Mauldin UMC Men’s fellowship.

Of particular note is that in the last couple of month’s she has taken to running to wherever I sit in church so she can sit next to me. In Tanzanian churches families don’t sit together. Typically women sit in one area, men in a different area and children in a third area. The Kiruani TAG church is not so specific. Men and women intermingle and kids sit anywhere adults don’t shoo them out of when they arrive late (adults arrive late not the kids). Of interesting note kids will often sit near adults that are not their parents and men and women often sit together but not married couples. Regardless of all that, the kids come into the worship area together and Beatrice and Gift always look me up to sit next to me. Sometimes they have to share a seat to do so but they never complain about it.