Talent show

For the past few years, our kids have had chapel on Sunday afternoons. It took place in the big classroom on the second floor and was led by a woman named Finit. Recently, it has been decided that the kids should get involved with the youth group at the Baptist church here in Bolosse instead. We were going to start doing that last week, but the youth group from the Bolosse church had been invited to have a joint meeting with another church youth group in a nearby town. So Bryn, Kerlande and I took 15 of our kids to the meeting that turned out to be a talent show. Young people performed songs, poetry, instruments, and games.

Our Fabiola played her clarinet in front of everyone. She was very nervous and had to start her piece over twice. On the third try, she nailed it and did a great job. As she was playing, I saw the MC whispering something to a young man in the back. When Fabiola was done, that young man took the floor to recite a monologue. He started well, but then had to stop and start over. Again, he stumbled on his words and had to start over. The third time, he performed the whole thing. I could be wrong, but I am quite convinced that he did it on purpose to make Fabiola feel better. And if that is the kind of person that our kids are going to be meeting at youth group, that's exactly the place that I want them to be.
All of a sudden during the show, there were loud bangs like gunshots. I jumped a mile out of my seat! And the noises just kept coming, one after another. It wasn't long before we realized that it wasn't gunshots - it was someone throwing rocks on the roof of the church. The roof is made of tin, so each rock made this enormous bang that, even when I knew it was rocks, still made me jump. The roof had a few holes in it, so we all scooted down so a rock wouldn't come through on us.
They played 2 games. One of them involved volunteers spelling their names with various body parts. Emmanuel actually volunteered to do it (!) and then Kerlande dragged me up there too. First they made us write our names with our finger, then our foot, our head, and finally our hips. Sounds mundane, but just try it. You will be laughing as hard as we were all laughing.
In the next game, one person got to chose anyone from the audience and make them do something "to make me smile". It started with this gorgeous MC/singer, who walked through the room and eventually chose our Argusto! She made him come up front and sing for her. He was embarrassed but he took a deep breath and serenaded her.

After Argusto performed, he got to choose someone else to do something for him. He pulled a girl from the other church's youth group up to the front and asked her to dance. She was too embarrassed, so he obligingly switched his request to singing instead. This she was willing to do, so he got serenaded in return. Once again, we were all howling with laughter.