Before and After

Today marks two weeks in Uganda. We are finding ourselves in a good routine. Isaac has grown very comfortable with us and it is obviously frustrating to him that he is not leaving with us at the end of the day. We are hoping that tomorrow will be the day he can come back with us.

We have been using our waiting time to begin our projects for the orphanage. 

This is what the playroom looked like when we arrived. They had done a great job of making it fun and colorful. The red windows on the right actually look into the rooms where the kids sleep. 

Cathy asked me to paint this tree because it resembles one they had at the old babies home. They will write the name of a child on each hand with their birthday and date of adoption. It is their family tree :)

 Cathy asked me to do a colorful alphabet and numbers on either side of the doors that lead out onto a large porch where the kids play.

Finally on the far wall we added some safari animals.

This is a closer look. When I finished painting the lion on the first day one of the children hugged it (and found himself covered in paint!) I left the hand print in his mane because I thought it was adorable that he wanted to hug the lion. It has been quite the adventure trying to paint the wall and keep the kids from touching it or me. I often find one of them climbing on my back while one is hanging on my leg and another is playing with my watch. 

When Bill is finished with the play set they have asked us to build it will go in front of this mural (so I intentionally left the center a little blank). Bill has a great story of going to purchase the lumber which I will let him tell on another blog soon.

Once we got started with our projects Cathy started to get excited. We now have plans to paint a mural in the dinning hall and on the front porch. We are also painting scripture in the bedrooms and hopefully some pretty flowers for the babies room. Cathy's cousin has come to help me paint. He started drawing characters in the hallways and the TV room today. Pretty soon the whole orphanage will be covered in bright friendly faces!

I can't wait until we can post photos of Isaac. He has been a great helper for all of the projects. Today he was helping Daddy sand the wood and yesterday he carried around the bag of paint brushes for me and made sure no one took them while I wasn't looking. :) I promise to overwhelm you all with photos as soon as we have our ruling in hand.