A Night To Be Treasured

Just like the village boys got a special event during the Santor's visit, so did the village girls! If you've been hanging around this blog for any length of time, you may have noticed that our children's and youth programs are lopsided pretty heavily in favor of the boys. We believe this is primarily due to the fact that the girls of our community are expected to carry a good portion of the responsibilities for helping around the house, but also they are not given the latitude to come and go as freely as their brothers. We knew that a special event, though, might be an opportunity to draw out those girls we don't get to see as often so we moved up the age limit to include any unmarried girl in our community. ;-)  And just as we hoped, it was a special night -- we had to shoo the last one's out the door!

To begin with, the Santor girls prepared a message based around the parable of the Lost Coin, and how the girls of our village are just like the precious coin that was lost -- that God is desperately seeking to find them!  To reinforce the message, the girls were given treasure boxes to decorate.  Each box contained a slip of paper with the verses printed inside.

We are all made in the image of God, and the first part of His character that we see in Scripture is of Him as creator.  Bearing His imprint, I believe we all have the desire and ability to create!

I love that when we do projects like these, they are never rushed, but done deliberately and creatively.

To help the girls feel extra special, we hired two young moms in our village who are beauty school graduates!  As girls finished up their creations, the beauticians pulled out the flat irons and hair spray and went to town!  Every single girl enjoyed the special treatment!

Of course, you can't get pretty and not have your photo taken!  (Just another excuse to dust off the camera toys! ha, ha)

These girls need no coaching whatsoever in front of the camera!

Sisters...

And another set of sisters...

I took headshots of everyone, then printed their favorite as a memento.  Here they are:

Thank you, Santors, for reminding our girls just how loved and special they are!  I think if when you come back, they will want an encore of this evening!  Their smiles say it all!