Getting Messy

     Yesterday,  I taught the women at the  Home for the first time and all of them chose to attend (praise God).  The agenda was germs and hand washing.  I was a little nervous, because I would be explaining things through an interpreter  (Elena did an amazing job).  I also do not know everyones learning style and wanted the material to be palpable for them.  My main goal was to keep it interactive, and try to cover all the learning styles!  My lesson was 30 minutes maximum, and it started out with the question of where do you think diseases come from.  The last time I was in Moldova teaching and asked this question, I got all kinds of interesting answers. For instance, if a women is sitting on the floor, she will become infertile, eating grapefruit will give you breast cancer,  or most things are caused by the "Current", which seems to mean the outside air or wind.  Yesterday the responses were much different although the wind was still attributed to causing a lot of diseases.  In order to help them understand the nature of germs, I had two of them poor Sprite on their hands and let it dry.  Then I asked the other women, if they had not seen me pour the Sprite on their hands would they think anything is on their hands?  They all answered with an emphatic, No.  You could see the light bulb clicking for several, now understanding that just because you cannot see something doesn't mean it does not exist.  In addition, although the "Current" might carry the germs, it is not responsible for the disease.  One of the girls then said.  if we could see all the germs on people, we would probably want to live in bubbles.  The whole room erupted in laughter, and everyone was looking at each other as if they were covered with germs.   It was pretty hilarious. At the end of the lesson, we all crowded into the bathroom and practiced washing our hands, while singing happy birthday to make sure we scrubbed long enough.

     One of the things that is said in this culture, when someone does not like something, is that it is not beautiful,  you are not being beautiful. I have rarely heard the phrases you are being bad or that is gross or ugly.   Pouring sprite on your hands would be considered a non-beautiful thing.  It was so fun to watch them be messy even though they thought it was not beautiful.  We had a blast!!!!