To lessen the confusion, I just call the older one "Swoap" or (more recently) "Swoapie." Sender is more formal, calling her "Hannah Swoap."
Hannah (Swoap) was one of the college students that spent her last spring break in Allendale. Though we've known her family for about 10 years, we barely knew her before a few months ago. Nevertheless, she had already been planning to spend the summer in Allendale, and we made plans for her to live with us.
She's been a great blessing to our own family. Her first full day in Allendale she babysat for 12 hours, as Joanna and I went to a wedding in Charleston. She played "animals" with Sender, paper dolls with Hannah, and Wii with Elijah. That afternoon, she tie-dyed shirts for all the kids, took them to Subway for dinner, found a park for the kids to play in, and more. We figured we needed to break her in quickly.
And she hit the ground running in Allendale, too. She's made connections with people and organizations, as part of her role of being an intern for Grace Church this summer. And she has spent significant portions of each day at the after school program, loving on kids and helping us figure out a plan for the full-day summer programming.
She wrote a post for the Grace Student Ministry blog, called Engaging Allendale. You can read her thoughts about:
- Living with us. She's very complimentary, so pay attention.
- The depth of the problems in Allendale. (I already wrote about three basic problems.)
- Loving kids in the after school program.
- Building partnerships in Allendale.
We're so thankful to have Swoapie living with us, and Allendale is, too!
PS -- We are also looking forward to two weeks of Student Ministry mission trips, starting tomorrow! There will be a lot of energy around here.
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