This week we had a fantastic week! Wednesday we had 50+ kids and mothers (We have been growing each week and the room is already too small where we are sitting). Someone had given us a large amount of marshmellows. Therefore we were going to give them out to the kids and play some games where the kids were going to eat marshmellows. Problem was, muslim kids are not allowed to eat marshmellows (gelatin may have pieces of lard). Only one girl was not muslim, so we could not have the boys play against the girls because of it.
I love living in Amsterdam West where we have such a diversity of cultures present. Our lesson wednesday was about Justice. We told the story of Jews being discriminated in WWII (Anne Frank Story and Corrie ten Boom) and then we told of the discrimination of South Africa's Apartheid and the USA's Jim Crowe's laws. Nelson Mandela and Rosa Parks were stories we shared about people who stood for justice with non-violence.
As we concluded, we challenged the kids to not talk badly about other cultures and people groups. There we have Dutch kids, Morrocans, Turkish, Surinamese, Africans, etc. We told them not to label other people groups (those morrocans or Dutch, christians or muslims, etc...) and not to let other people talk bad about people like that as well. We hear these kind of generalizations all the time. The challenge was to reach out to people different that yourself and to see how much we can learn by befriending children and people of different cultures/backgrounds.
The next day I ate a meal at a Morrocan neighborhood center. I was one of the few white people present and we ate a bunch of sea food with our hands. Our morrocan friends mostly do not use silverware and they are really big on relationships. These were just a few of our highpoints of the week.
I love living in Amsterdam West where we have such a diversity of cultures present. Our lesson wednesday was about Justice. We told the story of Jews being discriminated in WWII (Anne Frank Story and Corrie ten Boom) and then we told of the discrimination of South Africa's Apartheid and the USA's Jim Crowe's laws. Nelson Mandela and Rosa Parks were stories we shared about people who stood for justice with non-violence.
As we concluded, we challenged the kids to not talk badly about other cultures and people groups. There we have Dutch kids, Morrocans, Turkish, Surinamese, Africans, etc. We told them not to label other people groups (those morrocans or Dutch, christians or muslims, etc...) and not to let other people talk bad about people like that as well. We hear these kind of generalizations all the time. The challenge was to reach out to people different that yourself and to see how much we can learn by befriending children and people of different cultures/backgrounds.
The next day I ate a meal at a Morrocan neighborhood center. I was one of the few white people present and we ate a bunch of sea food with our hands. Our morrocan friends mostly do not use silverware and they are really big on relationships. These were just a few of our highpoints of the week.
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