I thought I understood missionary kids pretty well; apparently I was wrong. A friend of ours, Noel, Jim's teaching partner for his first two years at Dakar Academy is now teaching at a Christian school in Texas. Her students made Jim's students Christmas stockings and packed them with very thoughful gifts - candy, small toys, toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc. (We can actually get toothbrushes and toothpaste here, but it was so nice of them to think of the kids.) She sent them to someone who was going to bring them to Dakar before Christmas. Since they weighed a little more than he expected, he left them in the US.
We paid the $45.65 to have them shipped to Dakar. Well they got here last week, so we thought we would give them to the kids at the Valentine's Day party, you know, for Christmas on St. Valentine's Day! Since there were several little things in each stocking I wrapped each one in a plastic Wal-Mart bag. (You would have to be a missionary to understand why we brought Wal-Mart bags to Senegal. Should I tell you that we save our Ziploc bags too?) The kids were thrilled with their St. Valentine's Stockings, but the best gift of all; the Wal-Mart bags. They wanted their pictures taken holding them and enjoyed pretending they were shopping at Wal-Mart. We had a good laugh and assumed, wrongly, that they had had their fun and we would never see the bags again.
Two days later they were still bringing their bags to school. After the party the boys went home and tied their Lego people to the bag handles, using the bags as parachutes. I can't believe how much fun they have been having with them. Now the other grades are going home telling their mothers they need plastic bags for their Lego people. Moral of the story, don't send toys--just Wal-Mart bags!
