Good Morning

I've posted a video here.  Hope you guys enjoy it (sorry that it's sideways for a while).  :)

Today's a little slower, and I should have semi-regular internet access for a while, so I got the chance to write a little:

Walking the two older girls in the family to school, it really hit me.  I’m in Fiji.  Men and women and children pass by wearing colorful cotton shirts and sulus (the breezy cotton skirts sported by men and women alike), greeting me with big, sincere smiles.  The sky is brilliant blue overhead and the water at the edge of our backyard is a similar color.  Flowers are bursting open in bushes along the roadside - bright pinks, yellows, blues.  A bright purple bus, no windows, rattles along the road ahead of me with only one passenger, going fast to get a little breeze going.  It’s only 8:40, but it’s already getting hot.  The sun is much more intense so near the equator, but it lights up everything and makes it that much more bright and beautiful.  Good morning.

The mosquitoes are also already buzzing, as at all hours.  “They’ll bite you less the longer you’re in Fiji,” Eden, the older girl, told me yesterday with an encouraging smile. 

  We arrive at the school, a plastered building that used to be a home.  Now, there are a few Fijian teachers who teach a home-school curriculum and let the kids work at their own pace.  The school’s chapel starts at 9:00, and kids run around, smiling, laughing, making mischief, tattling on one another.  Kids line up on benches for chapel underneath the school’s porch roof.  The sun in already beating down on the land, but in the shade the breeze is gentle.  

One of the teachers approaches the front of the little group.  She is Fijian, her bright flower-printed dress contrasting beautifully with her dark skin.  She is short, with curly hair close to her scalp and a light shawl gracing her shoulders.  She asks the children to bow their heads in prayer.  Heads drop and eyes close in unison.  

“Dear Lord, thank You for this day.  Thank You for the lives of the children, and the lives of the teachers, and the lives of the parents.  Thank You that we can come here for one more day and learn.  Please help us to do the tasks You set before us.  Please give us diligent hearts and let Your Spirit be on us as we work for You.”     

  Good morning.