What a fun evening!

I had guests tonight. Many. As in, at the height of the evening, I had 12 people in my living room. That's a lot of people for my small space, but it was great. The dinner group was smaller (just 6), and then 6 more came for chai, dessert and games.

When I invited all the orphanage parents for games at my place, they were puzzled. "What do you mean, games?"

"We're going to play football (i.e. soccer) in my house," I'd joke. "OK, not really. But come if you'd like. Even if you just choose to have chai. But I guarantee you'll laugh."

They trickled in hesitantly, asking about the game the Davises, Nicole and I were playing (Sequence), yet not really interested in finding out what we wazungu were doing. But after the tea mugs and dessert plates were out of the way and we started playing Jenga, it was a whole different story.

Dorcas kept trying to convince everyone to keep the foundation strong. "Barak! Barak!" she'd keep urging anyone reaching for a tile. (That means, "at the top." Which made me think of Barak Obama. His dad is Kenyan. He may have named his son with the hope that he'll be "at the top" one day.)

Pastor Jonah would cover his face every time it seemed like the tower became unstable. At times, he actually got up and turned his back to the game, too scared to see it all come down. Pastor Philip would take out a piece and get it almost all the way out, then carefully push the whole thing back. Nelson hardly said a word. He kept strategizing, until finally he said, "Imagine! We parents always just watch the children play games. I would have never thought that we can have so much fun playing games and laughing this much!"

Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and before everyone left, they started asking about the game we were playing when they came in. "How does that one work?" David wanted to know. "We should have more nights like this."

Yeah God. These guys have a really challenging task, raising 24+ kids as young couples. As we closed the night with prayer, I thanked God that He's a God who created laughter, too, and that he delights in us.

What a joy to be able to serve my friends in this rare way.

What fun to let our hair down and laugh together till the tears rolled.