Courtney Ingalls

Today was the second day of workshops. This morning, Rachel taught the girls dental hygiene and so we showed them how to brush their teeth properly. Two by two they would go into the bathroom and brush their teeth, up and down, side to side, their tongues and then learned how to spit and gargle. The girls loved it even though we all brushed our teeth at least 8 times in the span of an hour! They were all so excited about their hygiene kits we gave them and went through them and smelled every one of them giggling and smiling. In the afternoon my group taught the girls how to make bracelets. The girls love to make bracelets! They are faster at making them then I am. Anu and Bobbi are sisters and together they busted out at least 10 bracelets in one hour. Something that I thought was amazing is that these girls don’t have very much, if anything at all, and almost every single girl wanted to give away all of the bracelets that they made. I had to beg the girls to keep just one of them for themselves. We have only been working with them for two days and almost all the girls know all of our names and are so willing to open us to us and let us love them. Even from the first day when they walked into the NHPC every single girls had a smile on their face and gave us all huge hugs and you could tell that they were so incredibly happy to be here with us.

Being here has shown me that we are extremely blessed to have the life that we have and to live where we do in the country that we do. Even more so though than that it has shown me that my attitude needs to change. Going through my everyday life I can always find so many things to be unhappy about and to be negative about. These girls are so much less fortunate than I am and you should see their faces all the time, they never stop smiling, giggling and laughing. There is this girl named Heena and she is 8 years old. There is nothing that can make this girl not smile, today we were all doing a “cinnamon roll” where you all wind around and around in a circle and we all ended up tipping over, on top of Heena. I looked down at her because Scott Melis and I were on top of her and she was just giggling and was smiling from ear to ear. Despite the circumstances all the girls are happy just like that, I feel so luck to have had them touch my life as much as they have in just two days.

One Response to “Courtney Ingalls”

1. nana/esther johnson, on July 30th, 2013 at 4:07 pm Said:

   HI COURTNEY ,WE MISS YOU ALREADY ,GLAD YOU GOT THERE OK,HOPE YOUR HAVING FUN ,LOVE TO ALL THE GIRLS AND YOU.BE SAFE AND MY PRAYERS ARE WITH ALL OF YOU.LOVE AND KISSES NANA AND GRANDPA