Lemons and Salt

Dear Aunt Alice,

I used to say that I wanted to be the neighborhood mom who served Kool-aid and cookies to all of the neighborhood kids. Well, I’m kind of getting to live out that dream, except instead of Kool-aid and cookies, I serve lemons and salt (mostly, I just serve the salt – the kids pick their own lemons off of the trees in the yard). We have a group of children who come to our home nearly every day, some asking for sweets, some wanting help with school work and still others who simply want to watch the white people (despite the fact that my housemate is Asian, the kids all think she’s white!).

Surprisingly, several of the kids want my housemate and I to give them math (or maths as they would say) problems to do, spelling words to test their memory and new books to practice their reading skills. I have never known an American child who willingly went to his or her teacher’s home and asked for extra schoolwork to do!!

I’ve started reading Beverly Cleary’s “The Mouse and the Motorcycle” with several of the older girls who come and am hoping that this will provide an opportunity to build relationships with them and, ultimately, teach them more about Christ and what it means to be a Christ follower.